




I 














THE MAN WITHOUT 
A HEART 


BY 

RUBY Mf AYRES 


NEW 


YORK 


GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 




•r- 







PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 


THE MAN WITHOUT A HEART 



THE MAN WITHOUT 
A HEART 


Chapter I 

/ WAS sad and weary-hearted, 

And I thought I’d take a rest, 

So I hopped the train , and started 
To the place I loved the best — 

To my home-town once again , 

Just to ease my tired brain; 

But instead of peace and quiet—to wanton riot 
I went home again. 

You’d never know that old home-town of mine — 
You’d never seen such changes in the time! 

The old Y.M.C.A. is now a cabaret — 

And the girls all look so sweet — yes! so neat — yes! 
And deuced pretty too. 

And the men who’ve stayed home all their lives 
Are dancing every night with other fellows’ wives, 
You’d never know that old home-town of mine! 


8 


THE MAN WITHOUT A HEART 


The song with its queer mixture of comedy 
and pathos, and the loud rasping voice of the 
singer, stopped, as the gramophone ran down 
with a whir. The man on the terrace outside the 
long, open window moved restlessly, and frowned 
as he leaned on the low balustrade and looked into 
the moonlit garden below. 

You’d never know that old home-town of mine! 

The words were true enough, as far as he was 
concerned; he had not believed it possible for any¬ 
thing to change as utterly and completely as this 
England after an absence of seventeen years. 

He had kept the memory of its wide fields and 
winding lanes an unfading picture in his memory, 
and had idealized its men and women, always com¬ 
paring them favourably with those hard workers 
with whom he had rubbed shoulders and roughed 
it in the backwoods. And one fortnight of the 
holiday of which he had dreamed, and for which 
he had longed for many years, had sufficed to bit¬ 
terly disillusion him. 

He had come home to a town which had swal¬ 
lowed up the village of his youth, to fields covered 
with ugly modern stuccoed houses, to his mother’s 


THE MAN WITHOUT A HEART 


9 


grave, and the crushing realization that the mar¬ 
riage of his only and adored sister had turned out 
a disastrous failure. 

In the room behind him some one started the 
gramophone again, and the crowd of noisy people 
in Linda’s drawing-room took up the chorus of 
the song, singing it lustily. 

. . . And the men who’ve stayed home all their 
lives 

Are dancing every night with other fellows’ wives , 
You'd never know that old home-town of mine! 

Rufus Asher smiled grimly to himself in the 
darkness. What had happened to England—to 
every one—that life as he had known it seventeen 
years ago should seem completely upside down, 
and a mockery of all the old memories and tradi¬ 
tions he had held so dear? 

Last night he had tried to speak of it to Linda, 
to put his thoughts into uneloquent speech, and she 
had laughed at him. 

“My dear old thing, you’re talking like a back 
number!” she said, rubbing her cheek lightly 
against his sleeve. “You forget that it’s seventeen 
years since you were home, and in that time we’ve 


10 


THE MAN WITHOUT A HEART 


all progressed. Nobody’s shocked at anything 
now; we just take it all for granted.” 

He turned round, his back to the garden, and 
looked at the gay crowd in the room beyond the 
window. 

They seemed happy enough. Most of the 
women were young and beautifully dressed; most 
of the men looked strong and fit for better things, 
so Asher thought, as he watched them fox-trotting. 

This modern style of dancing was new and dis¬ 
tasteful to him; as the music stopped once more, 
he turned hastily and moved further along the ter¬ 
race into the shadows, anxious to escape observa¬ 
tion. 

He knew he had not been a success at his sister’s 
house-party, and the knowledge made him ill at 
ease. 

“You’re not very sociable, you know,” Linda 
had chided him earlier in the evening. “Talk 
about us changing! You’ve changed more than 
we have, Ruffo! I told every one what a rip you 
used to be, but you’ve left it all behind, haven’t 
you?” 

Was that true, he wondered, and he thought of 
the change in Linda’s face—her too bright eyes 


THE MAN WITHOUT A HEART 11 

that never seemed to smile—and anger stirred in 
his heart. 

Only four years ago she had written to him in 
rapture; she had met the most wonderful man in 
the world. The letter bubbled over with happi¬ 
ness and the glory of romance; it had stirred his 
lonely heart with envy and a faint jealousy, as 
he realized that he could no longer expect to be 
first in her life. 

As children he and Linda had adored one an¬ 
other, and after he went abroad she had never fail¬ 
ed to write to him each week, until she married Ed¬ 
mund Hyde. The change had come then, as he 
had known it must come; her letters had grown 
few and far between, and less confidential and spon¬ 
taneous. It had seemed as though she purposely 
avoided answering his questions, or telling him any¬ 
thing of her home-life; but until he came back 
to England he had not suspected that she was 
unhappy in her marriage. 

He had never met Hyde before, but he had con¬ 
ceived an instant dislike for him, although the man 
was a gentleman. 

“What do you think of Edmund?” Linda had 
inquired, rather nervously, at the end of his first 


12 THE MAN WITHOUT A HEART 

day with her, and he had answered the question 
by asking another. 

“Are you happy, Linda?” 

It had not needed her flush or faltering eyes 
to tell him; he had known already, but she had 
tried her best to deceive him. After listening pa¬ 
tiently for a few moments, he took her hand in his 
big clasp, holding it gently as he said: 

“You can trust me; tell me what is the matter.” 

But she had only laughed constrainedly and 
drawn her hand away. 

“You are imagining things, Ruffo. There’s 
nothing the matter. I suppose we all get disap¬ 
pointed with marriage; it never turns out as we 
think it will.” 

That was so like a woman!—to try and protect 
the man she had married. He had not dared ask 
the inevitable question: “Is there another woman?” 
but he had sworn in his heart that he would find 
out, and that if Hyde was playing a crooked game 
he should be made to answer for it. 

And then, as if guessing his thoughts, Linda had 
cried out: 

“You won’t say anything to him, will you, Ruffo, 
dear? Promise me you won’t tell any one!” 

“I shall not speak of it,” he promised her; but 


THE MAN WITHOUT A HEART 13 

since then he had watched his sister’s husband as 
a cat watches a mouse, furtively, and without ex¬ 
citing suspicion, but so far unsuccessfully. 

The fellow was clever—too clever to be honest, 
Rufus told himself savagely, as the dancers came 
crowding out of the drawing-room on to the ter¬ 
race; and he rose to his feet to look for the one 
woman of the many in his sister’s house-party who 
had escaped his condemnation. 

Barbara Weir was different from all the others, 
or so he believed. 

His queer, critical mind had placed her apart 
with his dead mother and adored sister—the only 
two women who had sounded the depths of his 
affections. She had come to stay with Linda the 
day after his own arrival. She was young, twenty- 
three perhaps, and full of the joy of living. 

“Not pretty! Oh, decidedly not pretty,” so 
Linda had said one day when they had been speak¬ 
ing of her. “But there is something attractive 
about her, don’t you think, Ruffo, dear?” 

Rufus had not spoken to her many times, but 
she had not avoided him as most of the women 
did, and she laughed in friendly fashion at his 
pessimism, defending her friends against his bitter 
condemnation. 


14 THE MAN WITHOUT A HEART 

He interested even while he puzzled her, and 
sometimes she felt a tinge of fear when she was 
in his company. There was something so ruthless 
about him, so intolerant. Physically he was very 
tall and powerfully built, almost a lumbering man, 
one might say, with a shock of thick, unruly, red 
hair, which had been responsible for his name of 
Rufus, and a hard, rather lined face. 

He had been for years very close to the seamy 
side of life, and it had left its mark upon him; 
he had learnt to distrust people, and to make 
friendships slowly; but where his affections were 
aroused he was capable of extreme jealousy, and 
the thought that Edmund Hyde was not treating 
Linda well at times almost drove him to frenzy 
for her sake. 

Barbara Weir had laughed at his blunt philos¬ 
ophy. 

“You’re a cave man, you know,” she told him. 
“You’re the sort of man who would pick a woman 
up in your arms and carry her off whether she 
wished to go or not.” 

He had agreed grimly. 

“Perhaps I am. At any rate, I am the sort of 
man who would commit murder if I saw another 


THE MAN WITHOUT A HEART 15 

fellow flirting with my wife, as some of them do 
here.” 

She had wrinkled her up her brows as she an¬ 
swered him. 

“You don’t approve of us, of course, but we’re 
very harmless, really we are.” 

He thought of that now, as he saw her coming 
towards him along the terrace. She was with a 
youth who was leaning down to her, talking ear¬ 
nestly, and Rufus heard her laugh and saw her 
shake her head; then her eyes fell on him, and 
she came quickly forward. 

“Bad man! I’ve been looking for you every¬ 
where,” she said. 

She dismissed the youth beside her with a little 
nod, and turned again to Asher. 

“I’m running away from an unwanted partner,” 
she told him, candidly. “Will you take pity on 
me?” 

“I’m sorry. I don’t dance.” 

“I know you don’t, and I don’t want to dance. 
It’s so hot in the drawing-room. Don’t you think 
it would be nice in the garden?” 

“Anywhere you wish.” 

They went down the terrace steps to the lawn 


16 


THE MAN WITHOUT A HEART 


below; it was a warm, still night, with a romantic 
crescent moon climbing high above the dark trees, 
and the air was filled with the faint perfume of 
sleeping flowers. 

“So you are running away from an unwanted 
partner,” Rufus said. “What is the matter? Does 
he tear your frock, or tread on your toes?” 

“Neither. I could forgive him those things; but 
he tried to make love to me.” 

“And you don’t like being made love to?” 

“Not by boys.” 

“And when does a man cease to be a boy, Miss 
Weir?” 

She laughed. 

“Is that a riddle? If so, I give it up; but I 
think some of you are boys all your lives.” 

“A happy state of mind, surely.” 

“I don’t know.” 

They strolled a little way without speaking, then 
Rufus said, diffidently: 

“I wonder if you would mind very much if I 
smoke a pipe? I have been longing for one all 
the evening, but my sister tells me that such things 
are not done in this enlightened company.” 

Barbara laughed. 

“Please do. I like a pipe; it makes a man look 


THE MAN WITHOUT A HEART 


IT 


so happy and at ease. Of course, you abominate 
cigarettes?” 

“I do.” 

“I thought so; you seem to abominate every¬ 
thing that men—most men, I mean—usually like.” 

“Is that a compliment?” 

She hesitated. 

“I am not sure,” she said at last. 

Rufus turned it over in his mind, then he in¬ 
quired interestedly: 

“What sort of things do I abominate that most 
men like, Miss Weir?” 

She spread her hands with a vague little gesture. 

“Well—dancing, and most of the other things 
we do here to amuse ourselves; and they’re really 
very harmless amusements, Mr. Asher.” 

“Are they?” His voice was cynical. “Is flirt¬ 
ing with another man’s wife, or another woman’s, 
husband, included in that very ‘harmless’ category,, 
may I inquire?” 

She was silent for a moment, then she said, de¬ 
fensively: 

“But every one does it, and it doesn’t mean 
anything.” He felt her eyes upon him. “You 
don’t like women, Mr. Asher.” 

He hesitated. 


18 THE MAN WITHOUT A HEART 

■“Present company and my sister always ex¬ 
cepted, no/’ he said. 

She laughed. 

“Please don’t be polite. I can bear the truth. 
Of course Linda adores you; she thinks there is 
nobody in the world like you.” 

“Perhaps that is fortunate for the world.” 

She stood still. 

“Would you mind if we sit down? I believe 
I’m tired. There is a seat round the big oak tree 
over there.” 

He went with her silently, and sat down beside 
her, his back to the tree’s gnarled trunk. 

“I wish I’d got a brother,” Barbara said, sud¬ 
denly. “I should have loved him just as much as 
Linda loves you. I’ve never had any one really 
of my own. Mother died when I was three, and 
my father died in India when I was over here at 
boarding school,” she said. “Ugh! how I loathed 
boarding school. I ran away once, but they found 
me, and I had to go back.” 

“Quite right, too,” Asher said, calmly. 

She turned indignant eyes upon him. 

‘“What do you mean? How can you possibly 
judge?” 

“All girls and women need discipline,” he told 


THE MAN WITHOUT A HEART 


19 


her. “You know the old saying, ‘A woman, a dog, 
and a walnut tree; the more you beat them, the 
better they be.’ Those sentiments are my own 
entirely.” 

He spoke half in fun, but she took him seri¬ 
ously. 

“I think you are a very hard man,” she said. 

Rufus struck a match with which to light his 
pipe, shading it with his hands from the night 
breeze, and in its sudden flame he saw her face; a 
very indignant face it was at the moment, with 
eyes that were angry and rebellious. The flame 
flickered and went out, and he said: 

“How can you have formed an opinion of my 
character? We have only known one another for 
twelve days.” 

“Fourteen,” she corrected him, promptly. “I 
came the day after you did, you know.” 

“Fourteen, then,” he amended his words. “And 
so in that time you consider you have correctly 
judged my character?” 

She laughed. 

/“I believe in instinct, and in first impressions, 
and mine are both generally right.”j 

“And so—I am a hard man.” 

“Yes, I think so. I think you would always 


20 THE MAN WITHOUT A HEART 

let your heart be governed by your head; and if 
people are like that, it really means that they have 
no heart at all.” 

“I am much obliged to you.” 

“Well—you asked me,” she said, deprecatingly. 

“I did, please go on! I am very interested.” 

She shifted her position a little, tilting her head 
backwards, so that the moonlight fell full upon 
her face. 

“Linda told us a lot about you before you came,” 
she said. “But you are different from what she 
said. I thought you would be quite young—in 
your ways, I mean—and very jolly! I thought 
you would like us all very much, and that we 
should like you-” 

“And instead?” he questioned, as she broke off. 

“Instead—well, you don’t like us at all! We 
know that! And I think we’re all too much afraid 
to dare to like you! It would seem like an im¬ 
pertinence.” • > 

“What nonsense!” he protested. 

“Oh, no, it isn’t,” she insisted. “Do you re¬ 
member that first night at dinner? You sat oppo¬ 
site to me, and you kept looking at me with such 
disapproval. I suppose you were shocked because 
I smoked and didn’t refuse a cocktail and liqueur. 



THE MAN WITHOUT A HEART 21 

At any rate, I know I thought that you were the 
kind of man I should not like to offend.” 

Rufus frowned. 

“That sounds rather as if you are afraid of me.” 

She nodded. 

“Yes, I believe I am,” she admitted, frankly. 
“You see, you’re hard, aren’t you, and intolerant, 
and critical? You think we’re all just the limit 
here, don’t you, Mr. Asher?” 

He did not deny it. 

“You must remember that I have lived for more 
than seventeen years amongst very different peo¬ 
ple.” 

“Still, you need not have shown so quickly that 
you disliked us.” 

“I am sorry. I apologize for my rudeness. It 
was quite unintentional.” 

He leaned forward, his hands hanging loosely 
between his knees, staring at the big house before 
them, with its many lighted windows. 

“Linda says that I am old-fashioned, Miss 
Weir,” he said, suddenly. “And perhaps she is 
right. “I’ve been away for so long, and it had 
always been the dream of my life to save enough 
money to be able to come home—for good! Well, 
I’ve come, and I wish I had not.” 


22 THE MAN WITHOUT A HEART 

“Oh—but why? Have things changed so 
much?” 

“Yes.” 

She gave a quick sigh. 

“That’s the war!” she said. 

Asher laughed shortly. 

“The poor old war! Everything is laid at its 
door. We are lucky to have such a plausible ex¬ 
cuse and likely reason for everything we do.” 

“Were you in France?” she asked. 

“No, they sent me to German East. I would 
rather have gone to France. We didn’t do much 
good in the particular spot where I was, except 
get fevers and home-sickness. I was there three 
years before I crocked up.” 

“What did you do then?” 

“They sent me back to Australia, and I got fit 
again; then the war came to an end, and I sold 
my various possessions, set my house in order, as 
soon as I could, and came home.” 

“To a changed, dissolute England!” she said, 
mockingly. 

“To a changed England, certainly,” he agreed, 
in his quiet voice. “Everything had changed, to 
me, at least! My mother was dead, and the old 
house where I was born, and over which I had 


THE MAN WITHOUT A HEART 23 

sentimentalized for seventeen years, had been 
hemmed in by horrible, new, stuccoed villas, and 
was used as a factory for somebody’s patent pills. 
I find myself a square peg in a round hole, Miss 
Weir; even my sister-” 

Barbara interrupted quickly: 

“Oh, but she hasn’t changed, surely?” 

“I think she has changed most of all. I left 
her happy and contented, without a care in the 
world, and I come back to find her none of these 
things.” 

She turned her head away. 

“She always seems to be having a good time.” 

He made rather a violent gesture of repulsion. 

“Do you call this sort of thing a good time? 
This life of artificiality? Always mixing with this 
v crowd of dressed-up puppets? Never being your 
natural self for one moment? ... If you call this 
having a good time, you have never lived at all, 
Miss Weir.” 

“Never lived!” She looked at him with a 
strange expression in her eyes. The many lights 
from the house shone full on his hard, rugged 
face, revealing its intense earnestness, and she said 
again: “Never lived! What do you call living, 
then, Mr. Asher?” 



24 


THE MAN WITHOUT A HEART 


He laughed. 

“Freedom! The country! To be able to ride 
miles over prairie-land where there are no stuccoed 
abominations! To be able to breathe and go your 
own untrammelled way! To spend your days 
where nobody judges you by the cut of your coat 
or the brand of cigars you smoke. Where men 
and women are good pals and hard workers. 
Where at the end of the day you are dog-tired 
with honest work, and not because you have been 
straining every nerve to go one better than the 

man who lives next door. Where-” He broke 

off, conscious of her regard. “I beg your pardon; 
you should have stopped me. I am afraid I am 
an intolerable bore, Miss Weir.” 

“I am very interested; please go on.” 

But he rose determinedly to his feet. 

“I have been extraordinarily eloquent for me, 
but I have nothing more to say. Shall we go back 
to the house?” 

She did not move for a moment. Then she 
rose slowly and stood beside him. 

“You are a strange man, Mr. Asher,” she 
said. 

“A hard man, as you told me just now,” he an¬ 
swered. 




THE MAN WITHOUT A HEART 25 

“A hard man—-yes!” she insisted. “I should 
not like to have you for an enemy.” 

They went back to the house, and she was 
claimed for the next dance immediately, so Asher 
went along the terrace to a window beyond the 
drawing-room, which stood open, a dim light burn¬ 
ing within. 

It was a handsomely appointed smoking-room, 
and at first sight it seemed to be deserted, but as 
he went forward some one stirred in a big chaif, 
and his sister half rose from its depths, sinking 
back with a little relieved sigh. 

“Only you, Ruffo! Fm so hot and tired! I 
came here to rest for a moment.” A smile strug¬ 
gled over her face as she met his eyes. 

“Are you tired too?” she asked. “Or merely 
bored?” 

“Both, perhaps.” He sat down on the arm of 
her chair, and she leaned her head against him. 

“It’s good to have you home,” she said, softly. 

He looked down with troubled eyes at her 
averted face. She looked what she was, an un¬ 
happy woman. 

“What are you thinking about?” he asked, ab¬ 
ruptly, and she roused herself with an effort and 
sat up. 


26 THE MAN WITHOUT A HEART 

“Nothing particular. I saw you in the garden 
with Barbie Weir just now. Do you like her, 
Ruffo?” 

“I hardly know her.” 

“Hardly know her! When you’ve been in this 
house together for a fortnight! Nowadays that’s 
long enough for people to fall in love and get en¬ 
gaged and married too.” 

“Say divorced as well, and the story will be 
complete,” he said, cynically. 

She held up hands of mock dismay. 

“I would never dare say such a thing, to you.” 

“You need not mind. I am rapidly becoming 
acclimatized.” 

He got up and walked to the window, where 
he stood looking into the garden, his big figure 
blocking out the moonlight. 

“Barbie’s going away to-morrow,” Linda said, 
suddenly. “Did she tell you? I’m sorry; she’s 
an asset to a party like this.” 

Going away! A crushing sense of dismay filled 
his heart. How could he tolerate the house when 
when she was not there? 

Linda went on vaguely. 

“I wonder she hasn’t got married! She must 
have had plenty of chances. Not that I can rec- 




THE MAN WITHOUT A HEART 


27 


ommend matrimony exactly, but when youVe got 
no money and no home of your own it has its 
points, I suppose.” 

“Where is she going?” 

“I didn’t ask, and she didn’t tell me. She hasn’t 
any relations, you know.” 

“And no money, did you say?” 

“Well, she can’t have much. Her father was 
in the Army, and you know what Army pay is. 
I suppose she’s got a certain amount, or she 
couldn’t live.” She shot a mischievous glance at 
her brother’s broad back. “If she was any one 
else I might be tempted to believe she wasn’t quite 
—well, circumspect! But as it’s Barbie-” 

“Miss Weir is a lady,” Rufus said, stiffly. 

Linda laughed. 

“Ruffo, you rude boy! Aren’t all my guests 
ladies? What are you suggesting?” 

“I’m not suggesting anything.” 

There was a little silence, then he turned and 
came back to her. “Linda, what are you going 
to do with your life?” 

He stood looking down at her, his hands thrust 
into his pockets, his eyes affectionately tender. 
She looked up, then swiftly away again, the colour 
rushing headlong to her cheeks. 



28 THE MAN WITHOUT A HEART 

“Do with it? What do you mean, Ruffo?” 

“What I say. If you’re not happy-” 

She got up and slipped a hand through his arm, 
laying her cheek against his coat-sleeve. 

“I’ve made my bed, I suppose I’ve got to lie on 
it,” she said, in a constrained little voice. “Don’t 
worry your dear old head about me.” 

“But I must worry about you; I can’t help it.” 

“I know; but there’s no need. You can’t help 
me or alter things.” She stood on tiptoe to kiss 
his cheek. “Leave me alone, Ruffo, dear. I’m 
best left alone.” She kissed him again, passing 
a hand tenderly over his rough hair. “You’re the 
sort of man I should like to have married,” she 
told him, with a little emotional catch in her voice. 
“A big, bullying sort of squaw-man, who would 
stand no nonsense, and yet be—oh, so kind!” 

Rufus laughed gruffly, and thought of Barbara 
Weir. “A man without a heart,” she had called 
him. 

“And now we must go back and make ourselves 
agreeable,” Linda said. 

She went over to the mirror and powdered her 
nose and reddened her lips, Rufus watching dis¬ 
contentedly. 

“Why do you use that stuff?” he demanded. 



THE MAN WITHOUT A HEART 29 

She looked back at him and laughed. 

“Why? Because every one else does, I sup¬ 
pose.” 

“Good Lord, what a reason!” 

“It’s as good as any other,” she protested. She 
waved her hand to him and disappeared through 
the French window on to the terrace again, and 
after a moment Rufus slowly followed. 

The gramophone was still playing, and as he 
passed the drawing-room window he stopped for 
a moment and looked in. 

There were many couples dancing, but he could 
not see Barbara Weir, and he strolled on to the 
far end of the terrace, and sat down in the shadows, 
pulling out his pipe again and mechanically fill¬ 
ing it. 

So she was going away. He wondered why 
she had not told him; it would have been quite 
an ordinary thing to have casually mentioned it; 
and again that crushing sense of dismay swept 
through him. 

He had told her that he regretted having re¬ 
turned to England, but it had not been the truth; 
he was glad that he had come home; it had been 
more than worth while that in return for his many 
disappointments he had met her; perhaps some 


30 


THE MAN WITHOUT A HEART 


day he would be able to tell her, and then . . » 
his thoughts scattered as hurried footsteps sounded 
along the terrace, and the soft sound of a woman’s 
dress, and then a voice, nervous and almost on 
the verge of tears, spoke in a broken whisper. 

“I was afraid I should not be able to get away. 
I thought we should not have a moment together 
after all.” 

Asher made a convulsive movement as if to rise, 
then sat passive once more, his hands gripping the 
chair-arms, his teeth clenched over the stem of his 
pipe, which he had refilled but had not had time 
to light. 

And the soft, shaken voice said again with in¬ 
creasing emotion: 

“Oh, I’m glad, glad it’s going to end at last! 
I couldn’t have borne any more. Edmund, are 
you sure, sure that it’s all right? That you will 
never be sorry?” 

There followed a man’s laugh, and the answer 
in a man’s deep voice. 

“As sure as I am that to-morrow’s sun will rise.” 

They passed close to where Asher sat—the girl 
and the man to whose arm she clung—so close 
that her skirts brushed him, and the faint perfume, 
which he could have sworn to, even if he had not 


THE MAN WITHOUT A HEART 31 

been sure of the voice with its unwonted agitation, 
for a second seemed to make the night air more 
fragrant. 

Then came the sound of whispered words and 
a woman’s sobbing laugh. 

And to every word that followed Rufus Asher 
listened with calculating deliberation, his head 
craned forward, his eyes narrowed beneath their 
heavy brows, till the gramophone, starting again 
in the drawing-room, drowned the two voices. 

People trooped back from the garden, where 
they had been spending the interval, and the girl 
at the dark end of the terrace beyond where Rufus 
sat moved. 

“We must go back; they will miss us and won¬ 
der.” 

Asher heard the rustle of her frock, and her 
nervous laugh, as her companion rose quickly, bar¬ 
ring her way. 

“You will not fail, promise me, Barbie?” 

“Do you need to ask?” 

And then against the moonlit sky the two figures 
were blotted into one in a close embrace, and 
Asher bit his lip till the blood wetted it, to keep 
back a groan that rose from his heart, and crushed 
his clenched hands against his eyes. 




32 THE MAN WITHOUT A HEART 

That hound Hyde and Barbara Weir! For a 
moment he saw the world red. 

When he looked up again they had gone, the 
terrace was deserted. He rose unsteadily to his 
feet, and stood looking up at the sky with its 
crescent moon and blue-black, limitless spaces be¬ 
yond, the cool night air beating on his relentless 
face. 

You’d never know that old home-town of mine — 
You’d never seen such changes in the time! 

The old Y.M.C.A. is now a cabaret — 

And the girls all look so sweet — yes! so neat — yes! 
And deuced pretty too . . . . 

And men who’ve stayed home all their lives 
Are dancing every night with other fellows’ wives, 
You’d never know that old home-town of mine . 

The doggerel lines mocked and tortured him. 
He had thought her so different from the rest! 
How she must have laughed! 

She had called him a hard man; well, she should 
learn how right she had been. 

All that was cruel and brutal in his nature 
seemed to rise to the surface. He smarted with 
pain because he recognized his own weakness to- 



THE MAN WITHOUT A HEART 


38 


wards her; he burned with indignation for Linda’s 
sake, and for the insult offered to her beneath her 
own roof. 

And although he did not recognize or admit it, 
bitterest jealousy was tearing from his heart the 
remaining roots of his belief in the goodness of 
human nature and of mankind. 

He had placed this girl in a little niche apart, 
with the sainted memory of his mother and his love 
for his sister, and she had been unworthy of even 
his casual regard. 

The day for which he had watched and waited 
had come at last, and he would not neglect to take 
full advantage of it, and make the girl who had 
ruined Linda’s happiness pay to the uttermost 
farthing. 







Chapter II 


I T was long past midnight when Linda closed 
the lid of the gramophone with a resolute little 
snap, and insisted that every one must go to bed. 

“You’ll be so cross to-morrow that I shall hate 
the sight of you,” she declared. “And Barbara’s 
got a journey before her. No, not another word, 
I insist.” 

“And as the first thin end of the wedge—be¬ 
hold!” Edmund Hyde said, laughingly, and 
switched off the light. 

There was a chorus of laughter and protest, and 
Rufus quickly stretched a hand past his brother- 
in-law and promptly turned the lights on again, 
his quick eyes noticing that Edmund had moved 
towards Barbara Weir. 

“How mean!” she accused him, mockingly. 
“Don’t they approve of kissing in the backwoods, 
Mr. Asher?” 

He made no answer, and Linda began to drive 
her guests out of the room and upstairs. 

“Come and have a smoke, Asher.” 

35 


36 


THE MAN WITHOUT A HEART 


A man named Hugh Langely, whom Rufus rather 
liked, touched him on the arm, and together they 
crossed the hall to the smoking-room. 

“Dancing not much in my line—getting old, I 
suppose,” Langely said, stifling a yawn. “Have 
a cigar?” 

“No, thanks, I’ve got my pipe.” 

Edmund Hyde had followed them, and was 
standing by the table mixing whiskies and sodas. 

“Jolly hot, isn’t it?” he said, casually. “This 
is the second collar I’ve ruined to-night. I must 
say I like dancing, though—keeps you fit! Do 
you good to take it up, Rufus,” he added, nodding 
towards his brother-in-law. 

“I should hardly be a success without the other 
accomplishments too, should I?” Rufus asked, 
coolly. 

“What other accomplishments?” 

“Sitting out in dark corners, making love to 
other men’s wives.” 

Langely laughed lazily as he stretched his long, 
slim form on a couch by the open window. 

“That’s not an accomplishment, it’s a crime, isn’t 
it?” he demanded. 

“Apparently not here,” Rufus answered. 

Edmund pushed a whisky across to him. 


THE MAN WITHOUT A HEART 37 

“Don’t croak so much, man; have a drink and 
cheer up.” He raised his own glass. “Well, here’s 
luck!” he said, sententiously, and drained it. 

Langely followed suit laconically. 

“Ching, ching,” he said. 

There was a little silence, then Edmund Hyde 
yawned and looked at his watch. 

“Past two! Lord, I’m off to bed; coming, you 
chaps?” 

“My dear fellow,” Langely objected, “give us 
a chance. This is the first time I’ve been really 
cool or comfortable all the evening. Leave me to 
it, for heaven’s sake! I’ll lock your beastly win¬ 
dows and shut out the burglars, if that’s what 
you’re afraid of.” 

“Righto! Good night, then.” 

He went away whistling cheerily, and Langely 
put out a languid hand and dragged another 
cushion beneath his head. 

“Nice chap, Hyde,” he said. 

Rufus made no answer; he was sitting on the 
edge of the table, his hands in his pockets. 

Langely twisted his head round and looked at 
him. 

“I’ll give you the large sum of one shilling for 
your thoughts,” he said, after a moment. 


38 THE MAN WITHOUT A HEART 

Rufus roused himself and laughed. 

“They wouldn’t be worth it to you.” He strolled 
over to the open window and looked into the de¬ 
serted garden. “How long have you known my 
sister?” he asked. 

Langely considered. 

“About three years—two, perhaps,” he said, at 
last. “Met her at the Barringtons’. Know the 
Barringtons?” 

“No.” 

“Nice family; you’d like ’em. Young Barring¬ 
ton was at Oxford with Hyde, I believe.” 

“I see.” Rufus turned and strolled back again 
to his seat on the edge of the table. “Do you know 
Miss Weir?” 

“Do I know her?” Langely laughed, rather 
ruefully. “Mo, and I know that she can’t stand 
me: hates me, in fact!” 

“Why do you think so?” 

Langely shrugged his shoulders and settled them 
more comfortably among the cushions. 

“One knows these things by instinct. I should 
have thought you would have noticed it for your¬ 
self. She never speaks to me if she can help it.” 
He paused; then added, slowly: “She’s a little 


THE MAN WITHOUT A HEART 39 

vixen, she’d like to turn me out of the house if 
she could.” 

Rufus was hardly listening; he had just heard 
Barbara’s cheery laugh on the staircase outside, 
and for the moment it held his unwilling attention; 
then he heard her running steps upstairs, and the 
shutting of a door somewhere overhead. 

Had she been talking to Hyde? Saying good 
night to him perhaps—snatching a few stolen mo¬ 
ments on the stairs where they were free from 
interruption. 

Barbara Weir and Linda’s husband! It seemed 
as if those moments outside on the terrace must 
have been a dream, as if they could never really 
have happened; and yet, the passionate embrace 
had been real enough, and the breathless, whis¬ 
pered words. 

And to-morrow, in a few short hours, they were 
going away together, and Linda’s life would be 
ruined! 

Langely had been watching him curiously from 
beneath his level brows, and now he said again, 
with a shade of interest in his lazy voice: 

“I’ll double my offer; I’ll make it two shillings 
if you’ll tell me what thoughts are capable of mak¬ 
ing you look so like a murderer.” 


40 THE MAN WITHOUT A HEART 

Rufus stood up with a short laugh. 

“It must be my natural expression. I’m tired. 
I’ll say good night.” 

“ ’Night, old boy—pleasant dreams!” 

Langely lay back on the cushions and closed 
his eyes with a little sigh of contentment. 

The house seemed very quiet as Asher went 
upstairs; the landing lights had been lowered, and 
outside the closed doors shoes and slippers of all 
sizes and descriptions stood neatly side by side or 
leaned sleepily together. 

There was one pair—small black satin shoes 
with crimson heels—at which Asher glanced fur¬ 
tively before he hurriedly looked away again. 
They were Barbara’s shoes, he knew; he had 
watched them twinkling round the crowded room, 
and they had walked beside him through the moon¬ 
light across the sleeping garden. He had felt in¬ 
expressibly drawn to her until that moment on 
the terrace; and now he hated her. 

His face was ugly in its hardness as he went 
on to his own room and shut the door. 

The window was open, and an edge of lace cur¬ 
tain stirred in the night breeze as without turning 
on the light, he crossed the room and sat down 
looking into the garden. 


THE MAN WITHOUT A HEART 41 

A little further along on the left the light from 
the smoking-room where he had left Langely shone 
out into the garden, making a square yellow patch 
on the grass. 

Rufus filled his pipe and lit it, and leaning his 
arms on the window-ledge lost himself in thought, 
merciless thought of what he meant to do in the 
future. 

Primitive methods were the only ones he under¬ 
stood; there was nothing subtle or clever in his 
mind; when he wanted a thing done he took the 
sledge-hammer, most obvious way of doing it; and 
to-night the thing he had set his heart upon was 
the saving of his sister’s happiness. 

She had always been the greatest factor in his 
life, and she was still his first and deepest con¬ 
sideration. Her happiness must be saved at all 
% costs; it mattered nothing who else was sacrificed 
to that end. 

And by the time his pipe was finished Rufus 
Asher had found his way. 

He rose, and was about to knock the dead ashes 
from the bowl on to the window-ledge, when a 
faint, indefinite sound on the landing outside 
caught his ear. 

A loose board—the creak of a door—nothing of 


42 THE MAN WITHOUT A HEART 

greater significance; to an untrained ear it would 
probably have passed unnoticed, but Asher had 
lived so long in the open that he had learned to 
read meaning even in the varied rustle of the trees 
and the trembling of the grass under foot. 

So he put his pipe back into his pocket and 
softly crossed the room to the door. And then it 
came again, more definite now, a light step, a 
woman’s step, and the blood beat in a wave to his 
face as his fingers groped through the darkness and 
found the door handle. 

A clock somewhere in the house struck four, and 
under cover of its chime Rufus opened the door 
and looked out on to the landing. 

A wavering flicker of candlelight was sending 
weird shadows on the panelled walls and low ceil¬ 
ing, and the candlestick was being carried by a 
woman who at that moment was descending the 
staircase. The loose folds of her robe were caught 
together around her as if to prevent the soft, 
soughing noise it would otherwise have made over 
the carpet. 

Rufus Asher stepped out on to the landing, and 
as if she felt his presence, the woman turned with 
a little shrinking movement of fear, and saw him 
standing there. 


THE MAN WITHOUT A HEART 43 

There was a moment’s silence, then she laughed 
softly. 

“Ruffo, how you startled me! Can’t you sleep 
either? I can’t. I was going down to look for 
a book.” 

She came back and stood beside him, and he 
saw how pale she was and how her hand shook. 

He took the candlestick from her and set it down 
on a small side-table. 

“You’re dropping grease all over the carpet,” he 
said. “I am sorry if I frightened you, Linda. I 
didn’t think it was you.” 

“You didn’t think it was me! Who did you 
expect to see then?” Her bright eyes peered in¬ 
terestedly up into his face. “You bad boy! Were 
you going to keep a tryst with some one?” 

They were both speaking in whispers for fear 
of rousing the house, but Rufus did not smile as 
he answered: 

“You are lucky I didn’t grab you from behind, 
or shoot at you, thinking you were a burglar. I 
generally carry a gun.” 

“A gun! Ough!” She pursed up her reddened 
lips distastefully. “Have you got it in your pocket, 
Ruffo?” 

“No; and you’ll take your death of cold stand- 


44 THE MAN WITHOUT A HEART 

ing there in that rag. Go back to your room. I 
can lend you a book if you want one.” 

She gave a little indignant cry. 

“Rag, Ruffo! Do you know that this garment 
cost twenty-five guineas ?” 

His hard face softened. 

“What a baby you are, with your fal-lals!” he 
said. He laid his hand on her shoulder, and stoop¬ 
ing, kissed her. “Go back to bed and get warm.” 

“Warm? I’m burning hot now—feel!” She 
took his hand and laid it against her cheek; then 
she laughed and released him. “Good night, Ruffo, 
pleasant dreams!” 

“Good night, my dear.” 

He watched her to the door of her room, past 
those little black slippers with the crimson heels, 
then suddenly she turned and came back, cuddling 
her little body into his arms and winding her arms 
round his neck. “You’ll always love me, Ruffo? 
Promise!” 

“Always.” 

He held her for a moment almost fiercely, then 
put her away, and went back to his own room. 

He was up early the next morning; he walked 
down into the village and sent a wire off long be¬ 
fore any one else in the house was astir, but as 


THE MAN WITHOUT A HEART 45 

he came back across the dew-washed garden he 
saw Barbara Weir standing on the terrace. 

She wore a tweed coat and skirt and a little 
close-fitting hat, and as he drew near to her he 
saw that her face was sad. 

“Good morning,” he said, perfunctorily. 

She turned at once and smiled. 

“Good morning. I was just thinking how horrid 
London will be after this lovely country.” 

“You are going to London to-day?” 

“Yes.” She sighed. “My train goes at nine- 
forty; that’s why I’m ready dressed; there won’t 
be much time after breakfast.” 

He stood beside her, looking across the garden. 

“When are you coming back?” he asked. 

“Coming back?” She made a little grimace. 
“I’m not coming back, worse luck.” 

His eyes fell to the level of hers. 

“Never is a long day, Miss Weir. I am sure 
my sister would be sorry to think that she is never 
to see you again.” 

She flushed faintly. 

“I don’t see why she should mind. We’ve been 
good friends, but friendships come to an end like 
everything else.” 

“I don’t admit that.” 


46 


THE MAN WITHOUT A HEART 


“Don’t you? It’s true, all the same, and you 
ought to know that it is, seeing you have been 
abroad—how many years?” 

His face seemed to sharpen. 

“Are you going abroad?” he asked, slowly. She 
seemed to hesitate; then she nodded. 

“I am, soon—yes. I don’t know why I’m telling 
you, nobody else knows; not that it’s a secret ex¬ 
actly; every one will know soon, but, I didn’t want 
any one to know just yet.” 

“I shall not tell any one, I promise you.” 

She looked up at him swiftly. 

“I know. I always feel that I can trust you. 
I suppose lots of people have confided secrets to 
you, haven’t they, Mr. Asher?” 

“Some.” 

The breakfast-gong sounded, and Barbara 
turned. 

“We must go in.” She gave one last look round 
the garden. “I wish I wasn’t going away,” she 
said, again. 

“Why go then?” 

“Why?” She looked up at him. “Because I 
can’t always do exactly what I should like, I sup¬ 
pose.” 

They were at the house-door now. 


< 


THE MAN WITHOUT A HEART 47 

“I am going to town by that nine-forty,” Asher 
said. “If I may travel up with you-” 

She looked up at him smilingly. 

“Oh, will you? That will be nice.” 

“You are very kind,” he said, formally. 

They went in to breakfast together. 

Linda was not down, but her husband sat at 
the head of the table, and Langely had just put 
in a yawning appearance. 

“Good morning, everybody,” Barbara said, 
lightly. She took a seat beside Edmund Hyde. 
“Bacon and egg, please—and a basin to catch my 
tears in. Edmund, do you realize that I am 
leaving you this very morning—really leaving 
you?” 

Edmund made a mock gesture of despair. 

“Alas! to my undoing,” he moaned. 

“Mr. Asher is going to London, too, so we’re 
going to console one another on the journey,” Bar¬ 
bara rattled on. She seemed to Asher as if she 
was talking for effect, trying to express a gaiety 
which she did not feel. 

Edmund looked across at him. 

“You are going to town, Rufus? Rather sud¬ 
den, isn’t it?” 

“Oh, I’m coming back; you’re not rid of me 



48 


THE MAN WITHOUT A HEART 


yet!” Rufus answered, grimly. “But I’ve some 
business to see to, so I thought I’d get it over.” 
He looked at his brother-in-law steadily. “Are 
you going up yourself?” 

Edmund shook his head. 

“No such luck; not yet, at least. I may steal 
a week-end later on, if Linda can make herself 
happy without me,” he added, with a touch of sar¬ 
casm. 

One of the maids came to the door. 

“The car is waiting for Miss Weir, sir.” 

Barbara sprang up. 

“Already? Good heavens, my watch must be 
slow! I won’t be a minute. I must just say good¬ 
bye to Linda.” 

“Sorry Barbie’s going,” Edmund said, when the 
door had closed behind her. “She’s a good sport, 
and just the one for a party like we are.” 

“Have you known her long?” Rufus asked. Ed¬ 
mund considered. 

“Yes, some time—before I knew Linda.” 

“I see. Well, if you’ll excuse me-” He 

went out into the hall for his hat and coat, and as 
he stood there Barbara came running down the 
stairs. 

“Linda says you’re to go and say good-bye to 



THE MAN WITHOUT A HEART 49 

her. She wants to know what you mean by going 
to London; she’s very angry.” 

Rufus climbed the stairs obediently and knocked 
at his sister’s door. Linda was sitting up in bed, 
very pretty in a lace wrapper and pink boudoir 
cap. 

“Ruffo, you’re not running away, surely!” she 
said, in dismay. “Why didn’t you tell me? Are 
you so tired of us?” 

“I’m not running very far, only to London, and 
I shall be back to-night; and I’m not a bit tired 
of you, and you know it,” he answered, stooping 
to kiss her. “I’ve got some business to see to.” 

“Be back for dinner, then.” She blew him a kiss, 
and Rufus went downstairs again to find Barbara 
already in the car. 

“Hurry! hurry!” she called to him. “We shall 
only just catch the train, Edmund says.” 

“Hoping you will miss it!” Edmund supple¬ 
mented from the doorstep. “Bye-bye, Barbie! 
Come again soon.” 

“Yes.” 

The car whirled them away down the drive, and 
out into the main road, and glancing at his com¬ 
panion Rufus saw that her eyes were full of tears. 

She brushed them away indignantly. 


50 THE MAN WITHOUT A HEART 

“It’s silly, isn’t it, but I’ve had such a good time, 
and I hate saying good-bye to people.” 

He made no answer, but his heart swelled with 
bitter anger, remembering what he had overheard 
last night. 

They had a carriage to themselves going to Lon¬ 
don, and Barbara seemed to have recovered her 
spirits, and laughed and chattered happily. 

“I wonder if I shall ever see you again, Mr. 
Asher,” she said, abruptly, just before the train ran 
into Victoria. 

He looked at her with a strained smile. 

“Why not? It’s a small world, Miss Weir.” 

“I know, but I often meet people, and get to 
like them, and never see them again.” 

“Are you trying to pay me a compliment?” 

“What do you mean?” 

“Am I included in the people that you have 
got to like?” 

She flushed slightly, but nodded. 

“Yes, I liked you from the first moment we met. 
You see, you were different somehow, and last 
night, do you know, Mr. Asher, what you said 
about freedom has haunted me ever since.” 

“What did I say?” 

“About riding miles over prairie-land where men 


THE MAN WITHOUT A HEART 51 

and women are good pals and hard workers—it 
sounded fine to me!” 

He laughed gruffly. 

“I dare say I let my tongue run away with me. 
You would probably hate Australia, and the people 
I like out there. I dare say at the end of a week 
you would be longing for London, and a new frock, 
and the men you danced with last night.” 

She made no answer, and the train ran into the 
station and stopped. 

Rufus called to a porter. 

“I will say good-bye, then,” Barbara said, 
quickly. “We go different ways.” 

“I have a car somewhere,” Rufus answered. 
“If you will allow me to drive you to your 
hotel-” 

She laughed. 

“With all my luggage?” 

“It is quite a big car, and the luggage will not 
be in the way.” 

“Very well. Thank you.” 

“If you will wait a moment I will find it.” 

He left her for a few seconds, then came quickly 
back. 

“The car is outside, and I have had your lug¬ 
gage put in, if you will come.” 



52 THE MAN WITHOUT A HEART 

She followed him out of the station. A big 
closed car stood at the kerb, and Barbara's luggage 
was piled on top. 

“Do you drive yourself?" she asked, in surprise, 
as he stood aside for her to enter. 

“My man brought it, but I have sent him away. 
I prefer to drive alone.” 

“I see.” 

He got in beside her and shut the door. Bar¬ 
bara made a little grimace as she looked out of 
the window. 

“We seem to have left the sunshine behind us,” 
she complained. “It's been raining here, and 
there's quite a mist.” 

Asher glanced at the sky. 

“We shall probably have a fog,” he said, briefly. 
“But isn't this your usual London weather?” 

“You talk as if you were not an Englishman,” 
she challenged him. 

He shrugged his shoulders. 

“I feel as if I am not. I have been away so 
long. I shall go back to Australia as soon as I 
can manage it.” 

Her face sobered, and presently she asked: 

“Do we all seem so very horrid that you cannot 
bear to stay?” 


THE MAN WITHOUT A HEART 53 

“I am sorry if I give you that impression.” 

She made a gesture of repudiation. 

“Don’t speak like that; your voice sounds so 
artificial, and I know you are not that.” 

“Miss Weir, you know very little about me.” 

She frowned. 

“Do I? Why do you say that?” 

“Because I am sure that you do not realize what 
a—what a brute I could be—if I felt justified.” 

She laughed. 

“That sounds alarming!” She leaned forward 
and rubbed the mist from the window. “You’re 
going a long way round, Mr. Asher.” 

“I am trying to avoid the traffic.” 

“I see.” 

The rain was coming down faster. Asher 
opened the window in front of him, and the water 
trickled off on to the bonnet of the car like a little 
rivulet. 

Barbara shivered. 

“What a dreadful day!” 

“Yes.” 

The swift motion of the car made her feel 
drowsy, and she was silent for some time; then 
suddenly she roused with a start and sat up at 
swift attention. 


54 THE MAN WITHOUT A HEART 

“Mr. Asher, where are we going?” She leaned 
forward again and peered into the wet, grey after¬ 
noon. “Why, we’re not in London at all!” she 
said, in sharp amazement. 

“No.” With a sudden turn of the wheel he 
drew the car to one side of the road and stopped 
the engine, then he turned in his seat and looked 
at her with a grim face. 

“I have something to say to you, Miss Weir.” 

“To say to me!” The colour ran into her 
cheeks, and faded quickly. “What have you got 
to say to me?” she asked. He did not answer 
at once, and she said again with a little catch in 
her voice, “Why do you look at me like that? 
You look so strange! I—what is the matter, Mr. 
Asher?” 

He shifted his position, and stretched one arm 
in front of her, catching hold of the door handle, 
as if to prevent her opening it, as he said, in a 
curiously level voice: 

“You told me last night that I was a hard man, 
Miss Weir, and you were right. I am hard, and 
that is why I have brought you here to-day. Last 
night on the terrace of my sister’s house, when 
you were there with Edmund Hyde, I was there 
too, and I heard every word that was said between 


THE MAN WITHOUT A HEART 55 

you.” His steady eyes never moved their relent¬ 
less gaze from her face, and she sat perfectly still, 
staring at him as if fascinated. 

“I had a great regard and respect for you, Miss 
Weir, until then! But now I know you are no 
longer worthy of my consideration. But I love 
my sister, and I am not going to stand by and 
allow you to ruin her happiness and her life. You 
understand?” 

Twice she tried to speak, but no words would 
come. She was trembling violently, and her lips 
were white, but at last she stammered out: 

“You heard—you heard—what—what did you 
hear?” 

“I heard you arrange to go away to-day—with 
my sister’s husband.” 

There was a tragic silence, then suddenly Bar¬ 
bara covered her face with her hands as if she could 
no longer bear the keenness of his gaze. 

The rain pattered down on the roof of the car, 
and the drops chased one another down the win¬ 
dow like tears, but for a moment the only sound 
of which Barbara was conscious was the loud, pain¬ 
ful beating of her heart; it seemed to be throbbing 
up in her throat, choking her; then at last she spoke 
in a trembling whisper: 


56 THE MAN WITHOUT A HEART 

“What—what are you going to do with me?” 

Rufus hesitated; then his face, which had mo¬ 
mentarily relaxed, settled once more into hard 
lines. 

“I am going to keep you a prisoner until you 
give me your word of honour that you will not 
see that scoundrel again, or until I am satisfied 
that you are no longer a danger to my sister’s hap¬ 
piness.” 

Her hands fell slowly from her face, and she 
looked up with a sudden flash of courage. 

“A prisoner! Such a thing is absurd. Impos¬ 
sible!” 

He shrugged his shoulders. 

“It may not be the way you do things in this 
enlightened England, Miss Weir, but it is the only 
way I know whereby I can secure my sister’s hap¬ 
piness and peace of mind.” 

There was an eloquent silence, then Barbara 
laughed a broken, wavering laugh, which held a 
flash of defiance. 

“And how do you propose to explain things to 
everybody?” she asked. “Do you think they won’t 
wonder where I am, and why they don’t hear from 
me? What will you tell every one?” 


THE MAN WITHOUT A HEART 57 

He answered unhesitatingly: 

“What would you have told them if I had not 
prevented you from carrying out your plans? 
Would you have felt bound to explain, or give 
reasons for running away with another woman’s 
husband? I think not.” 

Her face grew crimson, and danger sparks filled 
her eyes. 

“You are doing a thing which is punishable by 
law,” she said. 

He hunched his shoulders indifferently. 

“I have not much respect for a law that allows 
one woman to ruin another’s happiness with im¬ 
punity.” 

She sat silent, her hands tearing nervously at 
each other, then she said more quietly: 

“Mr. Asher, I am sure you do not realize what 
you are doing. I ask you, I beg of you, for both 
our sakes, to let me go.” 

“No.” 

She sat staring before her at the dreary after¬ 
noon, her breath coming fast; then she broke out 
again: 

“Where are you taking me? What are you go¬ 
ing to do with me?” 


58 


THE MAN WITHOUT A HEART 


“You will see presently.” 

“You are judging me and Edmund—unheard! 
you do not know the truth. If you did-” 

“I am concerned with nothing except my sister’s 
happiness.” 

She caught her breath with a frightened sound. 

“You think so much of her?” 

“She is all I have in the world, and I respect 
and honour her as I have never been able to re¬ 
spect or honour any other woman.” 

“I see.” 

She felt as if she were in a dream, and yet her 
brain had never been more clear and active; every 
nerve in her body seemed tuned up and ready to 
meet what was coming next; when he took his 
hand from the door she gave a little movement for¬ 
ward as if to open it, and he said at once: 

“I should not do that if I were you. There is 
nobody about, and if you managed to run away I 
could easily overtake you.” 

She sat back again, breathing fast, and he 
started up the engine and the car moved slowly 
forward once more. 

After a moment she asked: “What are you go¬ 
ing to do with me? Shut me up somewhere— 
starve me? Oh, Mr. Asher, I beg of you to think! 



THE MAN WITHOUT A HEART 59 

You’re frightening me—you couldn’t be so cruel.” 

“I could be more than cruel to a woman who 
has treated my sister as you have, Miss Weir.” 

“How have I treated her? What have I done? 
What did she tell you?” 

“She has told me nothing. I discovered it all 
for myself.” 

She broke into shrill laughter; her nerves were 
beginning to stampede. 

“It’s like a melodrama with you for the villain! 
Am I to have my hair cropped and wear a convict 
dress?” 

“You are talking nonsense.” 

She turned to him with pathetic eagerness. 

“Yes, we are both talking nonsense, aren’t we? 
It’s only just a joke, isn’t it? Say that it is! 
We’ve been good friends, you and I! I like you 
—I—*—” She stopped, but he said nothing, and 
taking courage from his silence she laid a trem¬ 
bling hand on his arm. 

“Stop the car and let me go, Mr. Asher. I’m 
frightened. Please—please let me go.” 

“No.” 

There was ugly, grim determination in his face 
and in his voice, and her hand fell nervelessly from 
his arm. 



60 THE MAN WITHOUT A HEART 

The blood receded from her cheeks as she looked 
at him, and a new terrible dread crept into her 
mind. 

% Was he mad? The thought turned her cold. 
One heard of such things, and read of them in the 
papers. That he was a strange man she knew for 
herself, even Linda had admitted it—and he had 
lived so long abroad and in wild circumstances. 
Supposing he was out of his mind! 

The fear gave her back her self-control; she 
managed a pale smile. 

“Well, wherever you are taking me, I hope there 
will be some food. Lm hungry. It must be long 
past lunch-time.” 

“I’m sorry. I’m used to going without food for 
hours myself, and I forgot. We have about an¬ 
other thirty miles to go.” 

The afternoon was drawing in quickly; the nar¬ 
row road with its dripping wet, overhanging trees 
was dark and depressing. Now and again Bar¬ 
bara tried, to read the directions on signposts that 
they passed, but it was impossible. 

In spite of her fear she was conscious of a thrill 
of excitement. 

The speeding car and the hard, set face of the 
man beside her made her blood leap, even while 


THE MAN WITHOUT A HEART 


61 


the thought of the future touched her heart with 
apprehension. 

He spoke suddenly. 

“You have not troubled to deny my accusations, 
Miss Weir. I think you are wise.” 

She raised her head proudly. 

“Why should I deny anything to you?” 

He looked down at her, breathing hard, then 
he broke into rough speech. 

“I thought you were different from all the other 
painted dolls I met in my sister’s house. I believed 
in you—I was glad I had come back to this 
rotten country just because I had met you—and 
then-” 

She looked up at him, pale to the lips, but with 
unflinching eyes. 

“And then what?” she asked. 

“You know the rest. I heard you and saw you 
for myself. I saw you in that man’s arms, heard 
his words to you, and I realized what a fool I’d 
been.” 

She shivered, then she answered slowly: 

“Yes, I think you are right to call yourself a 
fool.” 

The ugly lines in his face deepened. 

“You are very candid, Miss Weir.” 



62 THE MAN WITHOUT A HEART 

Her voice rose passionately. 

“You are a fool! Just a blind, narrow fool in 
spite of all your boasted experience, so that you 
can only see along the pathway of your own big¬ 
oted opinions. You talk about all my friends and 
myself, and despise us; yet we are all a thousand 
times more generous and tolerant to one another 
than you could ever be! You make a friend of 
Hugh Langely, a man who, if you knew him as 
I do, you would want to kick out of the house. 
You think you are such a fine judge of character, 
so infallible.” Her voice was biting in its scorn. 
“Some day you’ll find out the truth; some day 
you’ll be sorry; some day it will be my turn to 
make you suffer for what you’re doing to me now.” 

The car shot forward with additional speed be¬ 
neath the sudden spur of his foot, and for some 
time neither of them spoke, till he leaned forward 
and switched on the head-lamps. 

They cut the darkness before them with widths 
of brilliant light, and Barbara closed her eyes with 
a little feeling of giddiness. 

She was faint and over-wrought, and the dark¬ 
ness and dreariness of the countryside added to 
her fear. Where was he taking her? What would 


THE MAN WITHOUT A HEART 63 

he do to her? And with another spurt of failing 
courage she began to plead with him again. 

“And if it had been your sister instead of me 
—if it had been Linda who was going to do the 
same thing—taking another woman’s husband— 
would you have treated her like this?” 

“Linda could never have done such a thing,” 
he answered, obstinately. “It is not in her nature, 
and you will not help yourself by suggesting it.” 

“And Edmund?” Barbara asked, with white lips. 
“Are you going to take him a prisoner too, when 
you have settled with me? Or are you too much 
of a coward to bully a man?” 

She saw the dull flush that crept to his sun¬ 
burnt face, but he made no answer, and they had 
gone some distance farther before he broke out 
again. 

“Twice in my life I have stood by and seen the 
ruin and unhappiness caused by women like you. 
For my sins I once imagined myself in love with 
such a woman, and she turned me down and went 
away with a married man—my best friend—a man 
with whom I had worked for years, and whom I 
trusted. She made him mad about her, and he 
left his wife, and his home and his work—every- 


64 THE MAN WITHOUT A HEART 
thing—for her sake. She ruined him, and he died 
four years afterwards, a drunken waster.” 

“And you blame the woman?” Barbara asked, 
fiercely. “What about the man?” 

“She tempted him, she put herself in his way. 
If she had not done so, he would have been alive 
to-day, and happy and prosperous.” 

“And so you are punishing me because of other 
cases you have known.” 

“I am not punishing you. I am preventing you 
from doing harm to yourself and to my sister.” 

She laughed with tremulous scorn. 

“You are, in fact, instituting yourself my guard¬ 
ian angel.” 

He made no reply, and with an effort she con¬ 
trolled herself sufficiently to say: 

“Don’t you see what an impossible thing you 
are doing, Mr. Asher? It might be all right in 
the backwoods of Australia, or places like that, 
but here-” 

He broke in roughly. 

“Here it would be better for every one if such 
things were taken in hand more drastically. Di¬ 
vorce and immorality are treated too lightly.,” 
His voice rose excitedly. “Why, years ago a man 
would have shot his best friend dead if he had 


THE MAN WITHOUT A HEART 65 

dared to treat his womenfolk in the way that all 
your friends seem to treat theirs to-day.” 

She made a hopeless gesture. 

“Things have altered! You must see that! We 
all look at things differently.” 

“I can only see that one thing is right and an¬ 
other thing wrong. I can’t alter the morals of the 
world, and I don’t want to try, but I am not stand¬ 
ing by while you wantonly ruin my sister’s life. 
I love my sister, Miss Weir, hard man as you 
think me, brute and fool as you called me just 
now.” 

“You love her, and you hate me. Is that it?” 
she asked, bitterly. 

Their eyes met for an instant in passionate an¬ 
tagonism. 

With every word he spoke she could feel this 
man’s determination and relentless power, and in 
spite of her rage and sense of fear and injustice 
she was conscious of unwilling admiration for him. 

He was a squaw-man; he employed only the 
crudest and roughest of methods, but by their 
means he would work his will and accomplish the 
thing he had set himself to accomplish. 

But she was totally unprepared for the sudden 
change that crossed his face, such a look of pas- 


m THE MAN WITHOUT A HEART 

sionate revolt and rage that for a moment she 
'was left with a blinding sense of unreality before 
he said, in a voice that carried with it unalterable 
conviction in spite of its violence: 

“I will tell you something now, Miss Weir, 
something which you may disbelieve if you like, 
but which is the solemn truth, none the less. The 
night I met you I thought I had met my fate. 
As I said just now, you seemed different from all 
the rest. In spite of your nonsense and light¬ 
heartedness I thought you were good and honest, 
and I put you into a place in my life where hith¬ 
erto only my mother and Linda had been. It was 
not that I ever flattered myself that you would 
give me a serious thought, but you were kind, 
and I never felt awkward or at a disadvantage 
when I was with you. I liked your company. I 
found myself looking for you if you were not in 
the room. Perhaps I have been spared much suf¬ 
fering because of what I saw and heard last night.” 

Barbara laughed scornfully, and the blood rose 
in an angry tide to his face. 

“You may laugh and sneer at me,” he said, 
steadily. “But I could have loved you! I could 
ihave loved you so dearly that I would have given 
you my life, had it been necessary to your happi- 


THE MAN WITHOUT A HEART 


67 


ness.” He drew a hard, difficult breath. “Well, 
that’s ended and done with, thank God! You con¬ 
victed yourself, and showed me what a fool I was, 
and that’s all.” 

“And so you are doing this—to pay me out,” 
she said, and then in a broken whisper she added: 
“You are very—clever!” 

He stopped the car with a sudden jerk and 
peered forward into the darkness. 

“There are two turnings here. I am not sure 
which is the road.” He leaned past her and opened 
the door. “I am sorry, but I must ask you to 
move so that I can get out and see.” 

Barbara obeyed silently; her limbs felt cramped, 
and now she began to walk again she realized how 
cold she was. 

The rain was still pouring down relentlessly, but 
the trees were thick overhead at that particular 
spot, so that she was fairly well sheltered as she 
stood waiting beside the car. 

Rufus walked to a signpost at the cross road 
and peered up at the white board, and in that 
moment Barbara made up her mind. 

She cast one swift glance behind her, then she 
turned and ran wildly, as if her life depended upon 
it, down the road along which they had come. 


68 THE MAN WITHOUT A HEART 

She was spattered with mud and drenched be¬ 
fore she had gone far, but she did not stop. To 
be free—to escape, was her one thought! When 
presently she heard heavy steps behind her, it 
seemed to increase her strength; her feet hardly 
touched the ground as she sped on and on, her 
breath laboured, her hands stretched blindly out 
before her. 

But fast as she ran, the following steps seemed 
to gain on her with every moment, and with 
sudden desperation she turned into the hedge which 
curved away a little at that point from the road 
and pressed back against the wet trees and under¬ 
growth, panting and terrified, not daring to move. 

A moment, then the steps came on, drew level 
with her, then passed, and faded away in the dis¬ 
tance. 

She stood up. She was shaking in every limb 
as she looked wildly round. Where could she go? 
She felt desperately that wherever she hid he would 
find her, his keen eyes would search her out. 

Then she heard him coming back, and his steps 
sounded so sinister and terrifying in the darkness 
that against her will she gave a little stifled scream 
as she began to run frantically back the way she 
had come, seeking vainly on each side for some 


THE MAN WITHOUT A HEART 69 

opening in the hedge, some gateway through which 
she might escape. 

Her drenched skirts clung about her, hamper¬ 
ing every step; she had lost her hat, and her hair 
was tumbling anyhow about her shoulders. 

It seemed to her excited imagination that Asher 
was close behind her, that he had but to put out 
his hand to seize hold of her, and she nerved her¬ 
self to a last desperate effort. 

A branch of blackberry caught at her coat, and 
as she turned to tear herself free, she slipped on 
a deep rut by the roadside and, twisting her ankle, 
came heavily to the ground 













Chapter III 


W HEN Barbara came to herself again she 
felt the warm glow of a fire upon her face 
and the gentle touch of hands chafing her own. 
She lay very still, a painful sense of bewilderment 
still clouding her mind; then slowly she opened 
her eyes to a man’s face—a face which would have 
been ugly but for its look of power, crowned by 
a shock of red hair. 

Then she remembered, and the blood rushed in 
a swift wave to her heart, almost suffocating her, 
as with a great effort she tried to sit up, only to 
fall back beneath the pressure of those strong yet 
gentle hands. 

There was an eloquent silence; then Rufus 
Asher said, grimly: 

“That’s better. I was beginning to get anxious. 
Do you often faint like that?” 

He seemed to expect no reply to his question, 
for as he asked it he slipped an arm beneath her 
head, raising her, at the same time holding a glass 
to her lips. 


71 


72 THE MAN WITHOUT A HEART 

“Drink this. You’ll feel better.” 

Barbara pushed his hand away, turning her head 
aside, and he said again, in the same indescribable 
tone: 

“You need not be afraid. I am not trying to 
poison you.” 

It seemed easier to obey than to resist him, and 
she drank a few drops obediently. 

He rose to his feet and stood looking down at 
her, as she weakly raised herself to a sitting posi¬ 
tion. But her head felt giddy, and with a little 
muttered exclamation of impatience, Rufus Asher 
stooped and lifted her to her feet, putting her 
gently down again in a deep wicker chair. 

Barbara looked around with vague eyes; things 
were still dreamlike and unreal, but all her life 
afterwards she remembered her first impression of 
the queer, low-ceilinged room with its unadorned 
wooden walls which shone in the flames from the 
leaping fire. 

The floor was of polished wooden boards, with 
a couple of rough-looking rugs partly concealing 
it, and an old monk’s table ran the length of it, 
with wooden wheel-backed chairs on either side. 

At present there was no light in the room save 
that which the fire gave out, and outside she could 


THE MAN WITHOUT A HEART 73 

hear the steady downpouring of the rain and the 
wind swaying and sighing in tall tree-tops. 

Then her eyes came back to his face, and he 
said again, still with that same note of impa¬ 
tience: 

“Well, are you better? That’s the worst of a 
woman, she always faints or goes into hysterics 
at the wrong moment.” 

Barbara felt the angry blood whip her cheeks. 

“I have never fainted in my life before,” she 
said. “And nothing you can do or say is in the 
least likely to send me into hysterics.” 

“Good!” He stooped and threw another log 
on to the fire. “That being so, I suppose you can 
listen to what I have to say, Miss Weir?” 

“I cannot very well refuse, can I? I suppose 
the doors are locked.” 

“As a matter of fact they are not,” he answered, 
coolly. “But all the same I should not advise 
you to try and get away. You are miles from 
anywhere here—quite five miles from a village, and 
off the main road. This hut is known as the Her¬ 
mit’s Hut, and it belongs to a man with whom I 
once lived in Australia. When he knew that I 
was coming home he offered to lend it to me, and 
handed over the keys. I had not seriously thought 


7 4f THE MAN WITHOUT A HEART 

of using it until last night—and then it seemed 
to me the very thing for which I was looking.” 

Last night! Surely that must have been a hun¬ 
dred thousand years ago, Barbara thought, and 
sick dread crept once again into her heart. Was 
this man mad? and was she really so utterly at 
his mercy? The steady sound of the rain and 
wind outside seemed to add terror to the strange¬ 
ness of her surroundings, and with a last spurt of 
courage she rose to her feet and went to him. 

“Mr. Asher—isn’t it time the joke was fin¬ 
ished?” she asked, and she tried to smile as well 
as her trembling lips would allow. 

“I forgive you for the fright you have given 
me—I forgive you for everything, and nobody shall 
ever know, if you’ll take me back now. Look what 
every one will think, what they will say, if they 
know that you and I have been alone here all this 
time! ” A little frightened breath caught her voice 
pathetically, but Asher only laughed. 

“You apparently had no objection to spending 
to-night and many other nights with my disrepu¬ 
table brother-in-law,” he said, grimly. “Why so 
particular with me? At least I have the merit of 
being an unmarried man.” 

She shrank away from him, her breath coming 


THE MAN WITHOUT A HEART 75 

fast, her courage gone. It was no joke, and if 
he was not mad, then he was a greater brute than 
she had ever dreamt of. 

After a moment she forced a question. 

“And I am to stay here—how long?” 

“Until I am satisfied that you are no longer a 
menace to my sister’s happiness.” 

“And you will stay here too?” 

“Yes.” 

“You told them you were returning to-morrow.” 

“I know; but my sister knows how erratic I 
am, and will think nothing of it when she gets 
a wire to say that I have changed my mind.” 

Barbara went back to her chair, and sat staring 
into the fire. 

She could not rid herself of the conviction that 
this was a dream, and that if she waited patiently 
enough she would wake up and be able to laugh. 
When Asher moved across the room to the door 
she turned her head and looked after him with 
the curiosity with which one follows people in 
dreams. 

He lifted the latch and let in a swirl of rain 
and wind, with a spattering of dying leaves swept 
up from the earth. 

“Come here,” he said. 


76 THE MAN WITHOUT A HEART 

Barbara did not move, and he turned and came 
back to her, taking her by the arm and forcing 
her to rise. Then he led her to the doorway. 

“You see what sort of country we are in,” he 
said; he pointed out into the gathering darkness. 
As far as the eye could see trees and the wild 
growth of underwood stretched away on all sides, 
and except for the drip of the rain and the voice 
of the wind, there was a profound stillness. 

Barbara shivered. 

“Shut the door, please shut the door!” she said. 

She felt as if she had been shown a glimpse of 
an enchanted wood; she went back to the fire and 
held her trembling hands to its warmth. 

She heard Asher shut the door and his step across 
the room; presently he stood behind her. 

“What are you thinking, Miss Weir?” he asked. 

Barbara raised her face and looked at him 
silently; then she said: 

“I am wondering if you are mad, or if, after 
all, you are only just a brute!” 

The hot blood lashed his face, as if beneath the 
sting of a whip, but he answered composedly: 

“Let us agree that I am a brute; what then?” 

“Nothing. I am at your mercy. If you want 
to kill me, I shall not try and prevent you.” 


THE MAN WITHOUT A HEART 77 

He laughed, and stirred one of the burning logs 
with his foot, sending a shower of sparks up the 
wide chimney. 

“I did not think you were so melodramatic, 
Miss Weir,” he said. “I have no wish to kill you, 
or injure you in any way. I am simply keeping 
you here as a prisoner, as I know of no other way 
to prevent you from injuring my sister.” Bar¬ 
bara’s lips moved as if she would have spoken; 
then she folded them closely together, and he went 
on: “You told me this morning when we travelled 
to London together that you were very interested 
in what I said to you last night about life in Aus¬ 
tralia. You said that the vast expanses and 
silences would appeal to you. Well, I am giving 
them to you here in miniature. We can lead the 
simple life together, and I will show you how the 
women do things out there. As a start, perhaps 
you will help me get the supper. I am hungry, 
if you are not; we have had no lunch, remem¬ 
ber.” 

Barbara sat back in her chair; the calm author¬ 
ity of his voice roused all the resentment and re¬ 
bellion of which she was capable. 

To be ordered about by him! To be told what 
to do! To be made to wait on him! Never! 


78 THE MAN WITHOUT A HEART 

Hungry as she was, she told herself that she would 
rather die. 

After a moment he said again: 

“Well, I am waiting.” 

Barbara managed a scornful laugh. 

“You can wait for ever as far as I am concerned. 
I shall not help you do anything, and I am not 
hungry.” 

But though she spoke bravely, her heart was 
beating fast with apprehension as to what he 
would do. But he only turned away with a shrug 
of his big shoulders. 

“Very well. You will be the sufferer, not I.” 

For some time he moved to and fro from a big 
cupboard in a corner to the monk’s table, and pres¬ 
ently the appetizing smell of frying eggs and ham 
rose from a pan which he had placed on the wood 
fire. 

He had made some tea, and the boiling kettle 
sang soothingly on the hob, sending a long spout 
of steam into the room. 

Barbara felt that she would have given her soul 
for a cup of tea, but she was too proud to ask, 
and presently he laid the table with a small cloth 
he found stowed away in a drawer, and drew two 
chairs up to it. 


THE MAN WITHOUT A HEART 79 

“You will not change your mind and join me?” 
he asked. “I can promise you that the cooking 
is quite good. I am used to getting my own 
meals.” 

She turned her head away, her hands clasped 
fast in her lap. 

“I am not hungry.” 

“Very well.” He shrugged his shoulders and 
sat down to table. “I know you are hungry. I 
know that you would give anything in the world 
for a cup of tea, only you think you are paying 
me out by refusing to take anything. You are 
quite wrong: you are only punishing yourself. I 
shall enjoy my meal whether you sit there like a 
martyr or not.” 

She made no answer; she kept her eyes fixed 
steadily on the fire, but she was faint with emotion 
and hunger, and she had to keep her teeth clenched 
to prevent herself from bursting into tears. 

She tried hard to think of something else—of 
last night; of the moonlit garden and the sound 
of the gramophone: 

And men who’ve stayed home all their lives 
Are dancing every night with other fellows 7 wives — 
You 7 d never know that old home-town of mine! 


80 THE MAN WITHOUT A HEART 

A dream!—this must be a dream! She would 
wake presently and find herself in Linda’s house, 
without this terrible sense of fear and loneliness. 

How absurd to think that Asher could really be 
such a brute! He had always been kind; she had 
always liked him. Why, only last night in the 
garden something in his quiet voice and the steadi¬ 
ness of his eyes had held her spellbound as she 
walked beside him in the moonlight, and now— 
she half turned her head to look at him as he sat 
at the table in the firelight—a huge, grotesque 
figure with the pot of tea and the appetizing dish 
of ham and eggs sizzling before him. She tried to 
speak, she thought she managed a few words, then 
suddenly the floor of the room seemed to rise up 
and hit her between the eyes. 

An unromantic dash of cold water brought her 
back to consciousness again, and Asher’s irritable 
voice. 

“This is what comes of being so pig-headed and 
obstinate,” he was saying. “If you’d been sensible 
and had something to eat, this wouldn’t have hap¬ 
pened. Now then, no more nonsense, please! 
Drink this tea-” 

Barbara burst into a wild fit of sobbing. 

Her last reserve of strength had gone, and she 



THE MAN WITHOUT A HEART 81 

felt herself beaten; she sobbed frantically, shaking 
from head to foot with the storm of emotion, and 
Asher let her alone. He went over to the window 
and stood staring out into the darkness until she 
was quieter, then he came back. 

“I am sorry you are so upset,” he said, impar¬ 
tially. “But all the time I can only remember that 
if I had not brought you here with me my sister 
would be in worse distress now than you are.” 

He watched her silently as she tried to wipe her 
eyes on a small handkerchief, which was already 
sodden, then suddenly he laid a hand on her shoul¬ 
der. 

“Please stop crying!” he commanded. “I hate 
to see a woman cry. If you’d done as I told you, 
and had some tea, this would never have happened. 
Now—are you going to be sensible?” 

She raised her drowned eyes to his face. 

“I’ll n—never forgive you for this,” she panted. 

“Time enough to refuse when I ask for forgive¬ 
ness,” he said, hardily. “Look! I’ll pull the table 
up to you. Now then, drink this tea.” 

She was too exhausted to refuse, and she ate and 
drank obediently, till slowly warmth and strength 
came back to her body, and with them her natural 
pluck. 


82 THE MAN WITHOUT A HEART 

She felt ashamed because she had fainted, 
ashamed because she had cried. That was not the 
way to deal with such a man! She must fight him 
with his own weapons; bring indifference with 
;which to meet indifference. 

She knew that he was watching her critically. 

“Feel better?” he asked. 

“Yes, thank you.” She pushed back her chair 
and rose. “Shall I help you wash up?—or is there 
—I suppose there’s nobody in the house to help?” 

“Nobody. We shall have to wait upon our¬ 
selves.” 

She tried to laugh. 

“Well, if you can do the cooking, I dare say I 
can manage the housework.” 

She cleared the table, carrying the tea things 
into the little kitchen place at the back. It all 
smelt damp and unaired, and she shivered as she 
looked up the tiny, narrow staircase, and wondered 
what the rooms were like above. 

She had fetched hot water from the kettle and 
begun to wash the crockery when Asher appeared 
beside her. He had taken off his coat, and rolled 
up his shirt-sleeves. 

“I’m going to get some more wood,” he said, 
bluntly. “The house is damp, and we shall have 


THE MAN WITHOUT A HEART 


83 


to have fires everywhere. I’ll bring your boxes in 
from the car.” 

She remembered the presence of her luggage 
with a shock of gratitude. When presently she 
saw the familiar boxes standing in the room she 
felt as if she had suddenly discovered old friends. 
When Asher left her to fetch the wood she went 
over to the large trunk that held her frocks, and 
sat down on it with a greater feeling of se¬ 
curity. 

After all, she had got to make the best of things. 
They would be bound to miss her before long; the 
people at the hotel where she had taken a room 
would wonder; Edmund would wonder; then, at 
the thought of him, the hot colour rushed to her 
face. 

To think that their conversation had been over¬ 
heard, and by Rufus Asher! She hid her face in 
her hands for a moment, and tried to recollect 
what they had said, but everything seemed to have 
escaped her memory. She went back to the 
kitchen, finished the washing up, and tidied as best 
she could; then she sat down by the fire again. 

Her headache had gone, and she felt better; 
she looked almost like her old self when Asher re¬ 
joined her. 


84 THE MAN WITHOUT A HEART 

He stacked up the dying fire, and stood looking 
at her. 

“Tired?” 

“No.” 

But try as she would, she could not keep the 
flicker of panic from her eyes, or prevent her lips 
from trembling, and there was a poignant silence 
till he said again: 

“You’re frightened of me, fknow, and I’m sorry. 
I never meant to frighten you, and you’ve no cause 
to fear me. You called me a brute just now, and 
r perhaps I am a brute, but even a brute can behave 
like a gentleman sometimes, Miss Weir!” 

She rose to her feet, her hands clutching the 
arms of the chair, a wild hope in her eyes. 

“Then—you will let me go?” she asked, breath¬ 
lessly. 

His face softened. 

“I am sorry, that is the one thing I will not do.” 

He stooped and gathered up an armful of wood. 

“Your room is upstairs. I will make a fire for 
you and take up your boxes.” 

Barbara took a step towards him. 

“And how long do I stay here?” 

“I told you. Until I am satisfied that you are 
no longer a danger to my sister’s happiness.” 


THE MAN WITHOUT A HEART 85 

“And then? What becomes of me then?” 

He shrugged his shoulders. 

“Then you will be free to go. Then you can do 
as you like,” he said. He turned away, and she 
heard his heavy steps ascending the stairs and 
presently in the room overhead. 

He had left the outer door open, and she walked 
to it and stood looking into the wet night. It was 
quite dark now, and the air was filled with the 
humid smell of wet earth and dripping trees. 

There was not a sound to be heard, until sud¬ 
denly the shrill, mournful cry of an owl cleft the 
silence. 

Barbara shuddered and went back to the fire. 

Asher had told her that it would be useless to 
try and escape; well—supposing she no longer 
had the wish to escape? 

Her cheeks burned with sudden excitement as 
she knelt down and held her hands to the glowing 
logs. 

To make him suffer, to punish him as he had 
punished her, that was the one desire of her heart; 
but how? How? 

Then suddenly she remembered words which he 
had spoken to her during that terrible journey; 
down here through the rain. 


S6 THE MAN WITHOUT A HEART 

“For my sins I once loved a woman like 
that-” 

A sudden throb of passionate excitement and 
exultation swept through her. She had attracted 
him from the moment of their first meeting, she 
had known it before ever he admitted it to her; 
well, for his sins he should love again! He should 
love herX 



Chapter IV* 


I T seemed a long time to Barbara before she 
heard Asher’s step on the stairs. When at last 
he came into the room she did not turn round. 

“I’ve had the devil of a job,” he broke out, ir¬ 
ritably. “The chimney must have been damp or 
something, and when I got the fire to light, half a 
ton of soot came down, and smothered every¬ 
thing.” 

Barbara turned round, a little malicious smile in 
her eyes. 

“I thought you liked roughing it and leading 
the simple life?” she said, unsympathetically, then 
suddenly she broke into unrestrained laughter. 
“Oh, you look like a chimney-sweep!” 

Asher flushed beneath the grime that streaked 
his face. 

“I’m not used to grates,” he answered, gruffly. 
“An open hearth and an armful of wood make a 
good enough fire where I come from.” 

He disappeared into the kitchen, and she heard 

87 


88 THE MAN WITHOUT A HEART 

the sound of splashing water. After a moment he 
came back. 

“You know, the more you tell me about Aus¬ 
tralia the more I wonder that you ever came back 
to England/’ Barbara said. She was sitting by the 
fire, one foot resting on the kerb, the light from 
the flames playing about her. “If I loved any 
place as much as you seem to have loved the back 
of beyond, or wherever it was, I should never have 
left it for this climate. Look at the world outside 
to-night, for instance.” 

He crossed the room and stood beside her, his 
eyes searching her face suspiciously. 

“Why are you so suddenly friendly to me?” he 
asked. “If you think you can get over me like 
that, Miss Weir-” 

Barbara laughed, though her cheeks flushed at 
the veiled insult of his words. 

“I’m growing sensible,” she said, quietly. “I 
quite realize that it’s useless to try and pit my 
strength against yours, so I’m going to make the 
best of it.” 

“For the moment, I suppose, and then seize the 
first opportunity of running away; is that it?” 

She shook her head. 

“No, I shall not run away. As a matter of fact, 



THE MAN WITHOUT A HEART 89 

I think I shall rather like being here when we’ve 
had a week or two of it.” 

She could have laughed at her own bravely 
spoken words. 

A week or two! When her only longing was to 
get away from the isolation and dreariness, and 
the voice of the wind in the trees. 

Asher answered, grimly: “I was once told that 
when a woman shows friendliness to a man she dis¬ 
likes it is time to beware of her.” 

She raised her eyes. 

“I don’t dislike you. Until to-night I liked you 
very much.” 

The faintest quiver twisted his mouth. 

“Without wishing to be rude, I do not flatter 
myself that that is the truth, Miss Weir.” 

She looked at him quietly. 

“It is, I assure you—ask Edmund. I-” 

She stopped, and bit her lip, realizing that she had 
made a mistake to mention that name, and for a 
moment neither of them spoke; then Barbara said 
again: “There is one thing you may not have 
thought of, Mr. Asher, or perhaps you have thought 
of it, and do not care.” 

“What do you mean?” 

She met his gaze unfalteringly. 



90 


THE MAN WITHOUT A HEART 


“I mean that by bringing me here and staying 
here yourself you are putting me in an impossible 
position. If people knew-” 

He interrupted ruthlessly. 

“Is it any worse to be here alone with me than 
it would have been elsewhere with Edmund Hyde? 
As I said before, at least I have the merit of being 
an unmarried man.” 

Barbara rose to her feet, such a wave of bitter 
revolt swept through her heart that she could 
hardly trust herself to speak, then with a great 
effort she managed to smile. 

“You think yourself very clever, Mr. Asher,” 
she said. “Perhaps some day I shall be able to 
show you that the winning cards are really in my 
hands all the time.” 

He bowed stiffly. 

“I shall be most happy if you can convince 
me now. Why wait until some far-away mo¬ 
ment?” 

She looked at him with pity in her eyes; he was 
so strong and determined, with his hard eyes and 
the heavy lines in his face, and her own words 
flashed again through her mind: 

“A man without a heart! A man without a 
heart!” 



THE MAN WITHOUT A HEART 


91 


“A penny for your thoughts, Miss Weir!” he 
said. 

Their eyes met, and held one another’s challeng- 
ingly, then Barbara said, defiantly: 

“I was remembering that even Samson was 
broken in the end—by a woman.” He fell back 
a step from her but he made no reply, and she said 
again: “I am tired. If there is nothing else I can 
do for you, I should like to go upstairs and see if I 
can find a place amongst the soot where I can 
sleep.” 

But in spite of what Asher had said the soot 
seemed to be a negligible quantity; the fire was 
roaring up the chimney, and Asher had dragged 
all the bedding and clothes from the bed and piled 
them in front of the fire to air. 

Barbara shut the door and locked it, then she 
looked around her. 

The room was low-ceilinged and raftered, like 
the one downstairs, with a similar floor of polished 
boards, and curtains of dull-blue chintz pulled 
across the small casement window. 

The furniture was of the plainest: a narrow 
wooden bedstead, a Queen Anne chest of drawers 
on which stood an old mirror, and a couple of brass 
candlesticks very discoloured through lack of clean- 


92 THE MAN WITHOUT A HEART 

ing; a corner washstand with a blue jug and basin, 
and an old-fashioned heavy wardrobe stood against 
the farthest wall. 

Asher had brought up her luggage and un¬ 
strapped it, but Barbara felt too tired and dispir¬ 
ited to attempt any unpacking; she just dragged 
forward the one armchair the room boasted, and, 
leaning her chin on her hand, stared into the crack¬ 
ling fire. 

Downstairs she could hear Asher moving about, 
and the sound of his step seemed to intensify the 
silence and her own loneliness. 

It was like a dream or some preposterous story 
to think that she was here in the heart of an un¬ 
known wood with nobody for miles around but a 
man who was almost a stranger to her, and in spite 
of her determination she again began to cast about 
in her mind for some means to elude him, some 
way of escape. 

She thought of Linda’s house with a throb of 
heartsickness. Could it be only last night that she 
had felt so safe and secure? She kicked off her 
slippers and tip-toed to the window, pulling aside 
the chintz curtains. With careful fingers she un¬ 
latched the window and leaned out, but there was 
no sound save the wind and the incessant drop, 


THE MAN WITHOUT A HEART 


93 


dropping of rain, and a ground mist prevented her 
from seeing anything at all, except the dull glow 
of the light from the room below. 

She shut the window with a little shiver and 
went back to the fire. Nothing to be done to¬ 
night, that was sure! She could only wait for the 
morning. 

She could still hear Asher downstairs, his cough, 
and once the tap of his pipe on the hearth-tiles, as 
he knocked out its ashes. ► 

She listened, and presently she heard him whis¬ 
tling, a soft little snatch of tune that seemed some¬ 
how familiar, though at first she could not place it; 
then suddenly she knew: 

And men who’ve stayed home all their lives , 

Are dancing every night with other fellows’ wives — 
You’d never know that old home-town of mine - 

She wondered if he was whistling it purposely 
for her to hear, or if it was inadvertence. And a 
queer sort of pity for him rose in her heart. She 
had called him a “brute,” and a “man without a 
heart,” and it seemed now as if all the time he was 
nothing but a headstrong, wilful boy, who was try¬ 
ing in vain to fashion the world to his own liking. 



94* THE MAN WITHOUT A HEART 

She wanted to hate him, but it seemed impossible, 
and it was with a deep pity in her heart that pres- 
sently she fell asleep in the arm-chair, with the 
comforting glow of the fire on her face. 

She slept like that until morning, dreamiessly 
and deeply, to waken to the realization that she 
was cold, and to the feeling of sunshine in the 
room. 

She started up with a gasp, and for a moment 
stood staring round her, not realizing where she 
was; then suddenly she knew. 

The night had gone, and she was safe! A deep 
sigh of thankfulness escaped her. 

She found her watch, and saw that it was not 
yet six; but it was light outside, and when she 
drew aside the curtains she gave a cry of pleasure. 
The little house seemed like a fairy cottage built 
in the heart of a wood, and the sun was shining 
on leaves that were already touched with the faint, 
indefinable change of autumn, and shading the 
deep bracken and undergrowth with golden light. 

She opened her window, and drew in a breath 
of the wonderful air—it seemed to be laden with 
all the scents of nature—and she closed her eyes 
with a feeling of intoxication. 

She felt that she knew now what Asher had 


THE MAN WITHOUT A HEART 95 

meant when he said that he longed for the country 
and the primitive life he had lived for so many 
years, and it flashed into her mind how different 
was this morning’s awakening from the one she 
had planned in London, in airless streets and the 
solemn breathlessness of an hotel. 

She washed in the little blue basin on the corner 
washstand, changed the travelling frock she had 
worn yesterday for a blue and white cotton, very 
simply made, and re-dressed her hair, then she 
softly unlocked the door and slipped downstairs. 

Wherever Asher was sleeping, he was not yet 
awake, for dead ashes filled the hearth in the sit¬ 
ting-room, and the curtains were still drawn. 

She pulled them back and opened the window; 
then she unbolted the front door and stepped out 
into the wood. 

Again she thought of the fairy story of the en¬ 
chanted cottage which a wandering child found in 
the heart of a wood, as she stood on the crazy 
pathway almost completely overgrown with grass 
and moss, and looked up at the little house. A 
rose which climbed over its front door had been 
heavily dashed with last night’s storm, and a great 
branch of clematis had broken away from the side 
of the house, and trailed disconsolately in the mud. 


96 THE MAN WITHOUT A HEART 

The window-frames needed painting, and the 
small garden was overgrown and neglected, but the 
thought leapt to Barbara's mind, “I can make it 
look a picture"; then she laughed at herself for 
the thought. Why should she take an interest in 
the place which was virtually her prison? All her 
plans should be of how she could escape. 

She went back into the house and lit the fire; 
then she hunted about till she found brooms and 
swept and dusted the sitting-room. 

In the kitchen she came across a pair of large 
and muddy boots flung anyhow into a corner, and 
a little twinkle came into her eyes as she stood 
looking at them. 

She remembered vaguely hearing a distant thud 
last night, no doubt when Asher had thrown them 
down; and after a moment she picked them up, 
and carrying them out on to the doorstep, found a 
blunt knife and scraped most of the congealed mud 
from them; then she cleaned them as well as she 
could and stood them by the fire. 

There was still no sign of Asher, but a hunt 
round revealed the car which had brought them 
last night sheltered in a tumble-down shed at the 
back of the cottage. But for its presence she 


THE MAN WITHOUT A HEART 97 

would still have been inclined to believe it all a 
dream. 

She picked an armful of bracken, and the few 
flowers she could find, and was arranging them in 
an earthenware jar in the sitting-room when she 
heard a step in the narrow passage outside, and 
Asher walked into the room. 

The colour mounted to Barbara’s face, but she 
smiled and nodded brightly. 

“Good morning! You’re lazy! I’ve been up 
ever so long. Breakfast would have been ready, 
only I can’t find it. Where do we keep the pan¬ 
try?” 

He looked at her grimly, then the old suspicion 
flashed back into his mind. 

“Have you been out?” he demanded. 

“Naturally. Can’t you see that I’ve picked 
these?” She indicated the ferns and flowers. 
“And let me tell you,” she went on, briskly, before 
he could speak, “that I think you’ve chosen a per¬ 
fectly lovely spot. I could live here and be quite 
happy for ever.” 

He made no answer, but turned on his heel, and 
Barbara called after him: 

“One other thing. If I’m to do the housekeep- 


98 THE MAN WITHOUT A HEART 

ing and keep the place clean, kindly don’t leave 
your dirty boots all over the place. I’ve got the 
worst of the dirt off for you this time, but in fu¬ 
ture you can do it yourself; that’s fair, isn’t it?” 

His face darkened. 

“I did not ask you to clean my boots.” 

She smiled in friendly fashion. 

“I know, but you would have done, I expect; so 
I forestalled you. However, it’s the last time. 
You can do all those sort of jobs—you can clean 
mine as well. I’ll give them to you after break¬ 
fast. And we want some more wood chopped, and 
there’s a creeper to nail up.” 

His face relaxed slightly. 

“Anything else?” he demanded. 

“Not for the moment, except that I should like 
to know where the pantry is.” 

“I’ll show you.” 

She followed him to the little kitchen, and he 
showed her an old-fashioned cupboard behind the 
door, which she had overlooked. 

“There wasn’t time to get in much food,” he 
apologized. “But there are bacon and eggs, and 
bread and butter, and stuff like that. We can get 
anything else we want to-day.” 

“Oh! Then we are near a town?” 


THE MAN WITHOUT A HEART 


99 


“We are five miles away.” 

“I see.” She asked no more questions but set 
about getting the breakfast, and presently they 
were facing one another across the trestle table, 
eating with good appetites. 

“If people didn’t know,” Barbara said, airily, 
“they might think that we were an ideally happy 
honeymoon couple.” He made no answer, and she 
said with a note of exasperation: “If we’ve got to 
stay here for an indefinite time, Mr. Asher, I think 
the least you can do is to be polite, and try to make 
conversation!” 

He looked at her steadily. 

“Are you trying to play a game with me, Miss 
Weir?” 

She shook her head, passing the butter. 

“You’ve got no butter. No, I’m not trying to 
play any game. Last night I thought of all sorts 
of wild schemes for escaping. I was frightened— 
I admit it! But now-” 

“Now?” he repeated, as she paused. 

“Now I’m quite happy.” She dropped a second 
knob of sugar into his tea. “I’m willing to stay 
as long as ever you like.” 

Their eyes met across the table, then he said: 

“Well, that’s a very sensible decision to have 



10Q THE MAN WITHOUT A HEART 

come to, Miss Weir, because 1’m afraid it will be 
some time before you can be allowed to go back 
to—all that you have left.” 

“I’m quite happy,” Barbara said again, but her 
heart felt cold with apprehension. 


Chapter V 


I T was much later on in the morning that Asher 
came to her as she was sitting at the open front 
door looking into the wood. 

“I want you to write a letter for me.” 

She turned. 

“A letter? To whom?” 

“To my sister.” 

Her face paled; she rose to her feet. 

“To Linda?” she faltered. 

“Yes, why not?” He saw her agitation, and it 
gave him a cruel pleasure. “Isn’t it usual to write 
to your hostess after you have left her house, to 
thank her for her hospitality? Or is that another 
of the customs you have disposed of?” 

She hesitated, then she said quietly: 

“What do you wish me to say?” 

“If you come in, I will tell you.” 

She followed him back into the room, and he 
put paper and ink on the table. 

“Shall I write from this address?” she asked. 
“You can put the name of the hotel where you 
101 


102 THE MAN WITHOUT A HEART 

intended staying. Just write an ordinary letter 
—you know what to say without my telling you.” 
He held the pen to her, and Barbara sat down 
obediently. 

She dashed off a few lines, and held them up 
for his inspection. 

“Will that do?” 

He read them carefully. 

“Thank you, that will do quite well. Now she 
will not wonder why you have not written, and no¬ 
body will worry.” 

Barbara laughed. 

“If that is all your concern, the letter need not 
go,” she said. “I have nobody in the world who 
will lose a moment’s sleep on my account.” 

He looked at her. 

“Except my worthy brother-in-law, I suppose?” 

The colour flickered into her cheeks, and died 
down again. 

“Oh, Edmund—poor Edmund!” she said, with 
a note of pain in her voice. 

Asher’s face was ugly as he turned away, the 
letter in his hand. 

“I wonder if there is a decent woman to be 
found in the whole of England to-day,” he said, 
savagely. 


THE MAN WITHOUT A HEART 103 


There followed two long days of monotony for 
Barbara. The momentary gleam of sunshine had 
faded after a few hours, and a steady downpour 
of rain succeeded it. Grey skies, sodden earth, and 
the steady drip, drip from the trees all around the 
little house enwrapped it like an impenetrable 
veil. 

In spite of her attempts to establish her strange 
relationship with Asher on a friendly basis, he re¬ 
mained taciturn and almost silent, except when 
necessity compelled him to speak to her, and at 
the end of the third day Barbara began to feel 
that she could stand the strain of her position no 
longer. There was so little to do in the house once 
the meals were cooked and cleared away, and the 
hours dragged terribly, 

Asher spent most of his time in the ragged gar¬ 
den outside the house, regardless of the inclement 
weather. He cleaned the car, and tidied the old 
barn which served as its temporary garage, and 
chopped stacks of wood, until Barbara asked him 
with an hysterical laugh if he intended to remain 
there for the rest of his life. 

He paused for a moment, and straightened his 
back, looking at her from beneath scowling 
brows. 


10 4 THE MAN WITHOUT A HEART 

“It’s something to do,” he answered, laconically. 
“One must pass the time somehow.” 

“Is that how you feel too?” she asked. “What 
about me, then? Don’t you think the days seem 
like world without end, amen, to me?” In her 
eagerness she came a step nearer to him, the col¬ 
our rising in her face. “Oh, Mr. Asher, isn’t this 
joke played out?” she urged, breathlessly. “Can’t 
we shake hands and go back to the world? I 
promise you, I give you my word of honour—that 
I will never tell a soul, never, never, how you have 
treated me.” 

Asher stooped and picked up another log. 

“Your ‘word of honour’?” he said, cuttingly. 

She fell back with a choked little cry, her hands 
clenched, then she laughed. After all, what did it 
matter? Things could not continue like this for 
ever, even if he were mad. Surely some day some¬ 
body would make inquiries for her and help would 
come. 

It was just a matter of being patient, just for a 
little longer. But she knew she was almost at the 
end of her tether, and that only her strong will 
kept her up. 

On the fourth morning the rain stopped, and a 
watery sun struggled out of the clouds. 


THE MAN WITHOUT A HEART 105 


Barbara felt hope rising in her heart as she 
opened the front door and looked into the wet 
heart of the woods surrounding them. 

She told herself once more that the whole sit¬ 
uation was preposterous, and could not possibly 
be happening; was she such a weakling that she 
must tamely submit to the will of this man? As 
she moved about preparing breakfast her thoughts 
were busy with her endless scheming and plot¬ 
ting. 

They could not be far from a village or a main 
road; she did not believe they were as isolated as 
Asher had declared; sometimes lying awake at 
night she was sure she could hear the distant sound 
of traffic, and once the scream of a motor siren. 

“A penny for your thoughts, Miss Weir,” Asher 
said at her shoulder, and she came back to the pres¬ 
ent with a start, to realize that the kettle had 
boiled over, and that she was standing with the 
empty teapot in her hand staring out into the 
rugged garden. 

“I was dreaming,” she said, a little break in 
her voice. “I was wondering if you would have 
dared to do this thing to me if I had had any one, 
any people of my own, who cared what became of 
me.” 


106 THE MAN WITHOUT A HEART 

He shrugged his shoulders and sat down at the 
table. 

“I thought we had done with such arguments,” 
he said, impatiently. “I thought you were recon¬ 
ciled.” 

She faced him with flashing eyes. 

“You thought you had broken me in, you mean,” 
she accused him. “Well, you will see.” 

Asher spread some butter on his toast with ag¬ 
gravating precision. 

“You are threatening to run away?” he asked, 
coolly. 

“You mean that when I give you the oppor- 
tunity you will take it? Well, you will have it to¬ 
day.” 

Her eyes widened with pathetic eagerness. 

“To-day?” 

He went on in the same level voice: 

“I am going to London this morning, and I shall 
not be back until late. You will have eight or 
nine hours entirely to yourself. Your jailer will 
be miles away, and you will be quite free to do 
exactly as you please.” 

She caught her breath with a quivering sound 
of incredulity. 

“You mean that I may go?” But though she 


THE MAN WITHOUT A HEART 107 


asked the question she had no real confidence; 
this was some fresh scheme of his, some new game 
with which to torture her. 

“You may go if you wish, certainly,” he an¬ 
swered. “What is there to stop you? If you fol¬ 
low the path opposite this house through the wood, 
it will take you out on to a main road two miles 
away, and the rest will be easy.” 

She watched him with fascinated eyes; she 
wanted to believe him, and yet she dared not. 
After a moment she asked a sharp question. 

“And then if I go, what then?” 

Asher looked across the table at her. 

“If I come back here to-night and find that you 
have gone,” he said, in a voice of flint, “I shall seek 
out that precious brother-in-law of mine and shoot 
him as I would a dog.” 

There was a tragic silence. Barbara had gone 
white to the lips, and the eagerness of her eyes 
had changed to unutterable weariness. She knew 
that he spoke the truth; she knew that he faould 
keep his word; she knew that no consideration for 
her, or his sister, or Edmund Hyde, would prevent 
him from carrying out his threat. 

It was, as she had thought, just a new torture 
which he had planned for her. Nominally she 


108 THE MAN WITHOUT A HEART 

would be free for the whole day, and she would 
never dare take advantage of her freedom. 

Asher finished his breakfast and rose to his feet. 
He never stood on ceremony, he did exactly as he 
pleased; he treated her as if she were a paid serv¬ 
ant whose feelings he had not to consider in the 
slightest. 

“You can please yourself what you do,” he 
said again. “But I shall keep my word.” 

He walked out of the room, leaving her alone 
at the table, and she sat there for a long time, her 
thoughts in a whirl, burning with a resentment 
which she dared not show. 

Presently he came back; he wore his overcoat 
and carried his hat in his hand. 

Barbara looked at him. 

“Why don’t you put your hat on?” she asked, 
mockingly. “You are not generally so respect¬ 
ful.” 

He ignored her words. 

“I shall be back about eight,” he said, and 
waited, but she did not speak, and he added signifi¬ 
cantly: “If you are not here-” and waited 

again. 

Barbara spoke as well as her trembling lips 
would permit. 



THE MAN WITHOUT A HEART 109 


“I shall be here.” 

He went away through the wet woods, where the 
sunlight made shimmering, fantastic shadows, and 
she was left alone. 

Once Asher’s presence was removed, common 
sense began to reassert itself in Barbara’s mind. 
Why did she allow herself to be bullied and over¬ 
ruled by him? He was nothing but a brute and a 
coward; a braggart, too, in all probability. He 
knew that she was afraid of him, and so made his 
threats. 

She rose presently, and mechanically began to 
clear away the breakfast things. She took them 
into the little kitchen, and put them down on the 
table, but further work seemed impossible. Why 
should she clean the house for him? Why should 
she do anything that he expected of her? 

She took her hat and went out into the wood, 
leaving the door of the house wide open behind 
her. The air was chilly after the recent heavy rain, 
but it was fresh and sweet, and, as she walked 
along, the panic and fear in her mind died away. 
She reminded herself that she had only to be pa¬ 
tient for a little longer, that something must hap¬ 
pen soon to release her from her present posi¬ 
tion. 


110 THE MAN WITHOUT A HEART 


Mechanically she followed the footpath which 
ran away at right angles from the little house, and 
presently she came to the main road of which 
Asher had spoken, a broad, smooth road which ran 
into the east like a strained ribbon across a board 
of undulating green, dotted with clumps of bell 
heather. 

Which way did London lie, she wondered, with 
a dreadful feeling of home-sickness, as she stood 
looking first to the right and then to the left. 

A fast car came rushing up the road, driven by 
a man in livery, and a wild impulse came to Bar¬ 
bara to stop him, and tell him of her plight and beg 
him to take her away. Almost she had lifted her 
hand, then the memory of Asher’s hard eyes 
checked her. He had meant what he said; he was 
not a man to make an idle threat. The car sped 
on, and was lost to sight over the hill. 

Barbara turned^ and went back through the wet 
woods to the cottage. 

She washed up the breakfast things and tidied 
the room, then hunted through her luggage for a 
book she had begun to read and had left unfin¬ 
ished, and drawing up a chair to the fire sat down. 

But she could not concentrate her thoughts; 
they kept roaming away to the life from which 


THE MAN WITHOUT A HEART 111 

Rufus Asher had cut her off so summarily. What 
was every one doing, and where had Asher himself 
gone? 

The silence all around seemed almost like a liv¬ 
ing presence that was watching her with eyes of 
suspicion, and for the first time it occurred to her 
that perhaps after all Asher had not really gone 
to London; that he was somewhere close by, per¬ 
haps even at that moment he was watching her. 

She put down her book and went to the window, 
but there was not a sound or a sign of any living 
presence, and she laughed at herself for the 
thought. The cheap clock on the mantelshelf 
struck three, and she was startled to find it was so 
late. She had had no lunch, and she went into the 
kitchen to get some, more for something to do 
than because she was hungry. 

The sunshine was fading, and the sky growing 
overcast again. The wind was rising and the trees 
were swaying agitatedly over the-little house. 

A thrill of nervous dread went through Bar¬ 
bara’s heart. 

Supposing Asher did not return that night? 
Supposing he left her alone through the long 
hours? She found herself suddenly longing for 
him; she would have given the world for the sound 


112 THE MAN WITHOUT A HEART 

of his heavy step, or the sight of his grim, unsmil¬ 
ing face. 

If only he would come back! She feared him 
less than she feared the loneliness and silence. 

She ate her lunch with scant appetite, and tried 
to settle to the book again, but it was impossible. 

Four o’clock! No ray of sunshine left now, and 
even the wind had dropped suddenly as if to give 
place to some force greater than itself. 

Four hours, perhaps more, to get through before 
he came back. How could she bear them! 

A sudden idea came to her. She would put on 
her hat and coat and go through the woods to meet 
him. Out on the main road she would not feel so 
lost and frightened, it was the solemnity and dark¬ 
ness of the woods that terrified her. 

She ran upstairs for her coat, and was taking it 
down from its peg on the wall, when there came a 
knocking on the front door below. 

Barbara stood still, her head turned to listen. 

Asher! Her thoughts leapt to the wild hope, 
even while she recognized its improbability. He 
would not knock, he knew well enough that the 
door would not be bolted against him. Who then 
could it be? 

She felt her heart beating up in her throat and 


THE MAN WITHOUT A HEART 113 


her hands turned cold as she crept to the head of 
the little staircase and peered over the rail. 

And then the knocking came again, louder and 
with more confidence, as if whoever was without 
suspected that the house was empty. 

If only she had bolted the door! In a moment 
perhaps the intruder would try the handle, and 
then- 

She nerved herself to action; she even forced 
herself to hum a snatch of song as she went down 
the narrow staircase with as much noise as she 
could make, and, nerving herself to a supreme ef¬ 
fort, opened the door. 

A man stood there in the fading sunlight, a 
short, thick-set man in a shabby overcoat, and 
with a cap pulled down over his eyes. 

He looked surprised when he saw Barbara, and 
after a momentary blank stare, began to speak in 
a mumbling, apologetic tone. 

“Beg pardon, lady, but I’ve lost my way. If 
you could tell me which is the road.” 

He spoke civilly enough, and Barbara gained 
courage; she pointed to the footpath. 

“That takes you to the main road—about a mile 
away,” and she made a movement to shut the door, 
but the man came a step nearer. 



114 THE MAN WITHOUT A HEART 

“I haven’t had anything to eat to-day, lady, and 
I was out all last night in the rain,” and as he spoke 
his eyes were going past her searchingly, as if to 
ascertain if there were other people besides in the 
cottage. 

Barbara hesitated, then she said as firmly as she 
could: 

“If you stay there I will fetch you some food,” 
and with a swift movement she shut the door and 
bolted it. 

Then she turned to the kitchen and was sur¬ 
prised to find how she was trembling. 

After all, the man was respectful enough, and 
perhaps he was really hungry. She made up a 
parcel of bread and cheese and some cold meat, 
and went back to the door, but this time she 
kept the chain up when she opened it, as she 
said: 

“There you are. You will find your way along 
the footpath quite easily.” And she shut and 
bolted the door again. 

She went back to the sitting-room and peered 
through the window, and after some moments she 
saw the man walking slowly away. 

But before he reached the bend which led into 
the heart of the wood he turned and looked back 


THE MAN WITHOUT A HEART 115 


at the house, with a queer searching expression in 
his eyes that turned her cold. 

She went the round of the little house after that, 
shutting all the windows and doors, and pulling 
the curtains, although it was still quite light; then 
she made up the fire into a roaring blaze and sat 
down beside it; but her strained nerves imagined 
footsteps in the wood at every moment, and the 
sound of that muffled knocking on the outer door. 

She did not dare to go to meet Asher, but every 
nerve seemed strained to him in a passionate 
prayer to come back, to come back quickly, and 
not to leave her to this nerve-racking solitude. 

Five o’clock! Half-past! The hands of the 
clock seemed to crawl. 

She leaned forward and threw another log on to 
the fire; then she rose and tiptoed to the window, 
drawing aside an edge of curtain to peer out into 
the gathering dusk. 

The woods looked eerie and haunted, and the 
trees towered skywards like watching giants, but 
there was no sign of Asher along the crooked foot¬ 
path—no sign of that other man whose last search¬ 
ing glance still lingered in her heart, a terrifying 
memory. 

Six o’clock! She went into the kitchen to busy 


116 THE MAN WITHOUT A HEART 

herself with the supper. It would be something to 
do, something to occupy her thoughts; and then, 
as she stood there, fumbling in the darkness to find 
candles and matches, a crash of thunder split the 
silence. 

Barbara gave a smothered scream and dropped 
the matches, spilling them all over the floor; then 
with a nervous laugh she went down on her knees, 
groping through the growing darkness to gather 
them up. 

A storm! This then was the meaning of the 
sudden dropping of the wind and the breathless 
silence. She tumbled to her feet again, her hands 
filled with the loose matches, and at that moment a 
flash of lightning lit the little kitchen and showed 
her with appalling clearness the outline of a man’s 
head and shoulders against the white cotton blind 
of the window. 

The vivid flash of lightning vanished, and left 
her once more in the darkness, the unstruck match 
in her hand, and her heart beating so fast with 
fear that she thought she would choke. 

The man who had knocked at the cottage door 
that afternoon had come back. Somehow she had 
known that he would do so, had been expecting 
him during the last dragging hours, although she 


THE MAN WITHOUT A HEART 117 

had so gallantly tried to shut the thought from her 
heart. 

And for this she had only Rufus Asher to thank. 
Whatever happened to her to-night would be his 
fault alone, and she told herself passionately that 
he was a brute and a coward. 

The thunder crashed again, and with a little 
shudder she covered her ears with her hands. 

Where could she go? What could she do? She 
was alone in this place, miles from a living soul, 
with the exception of that sinister presence out 
there in the storm. 

What did he want? She dared not asked her¬ 
self. She only knew that if he broke into the 
house she would be powerless. 

She crept back to the front sitting-room, still 
grasping the candlestick in her shaking hand; it 
seemed less lonely with the light and warmth of 
the fire about her; but she was cold from head to 
foot, and the beating of her heart was like a ham¬ 
mer in the silence. 

She stood in the centre of the room, her strained 
eyes fixed on the curtained window. 

Where was the man now? How soon would he 
try to break in? And which way would he make 
the attempt? 




118 THE MAN WITHOUT A HEART 

Would Asher never come? What was he made 
of that he could leave her alone with this terror? 
She wished with all her soul that she had defied 
his threat and made her escape; it seemed now the 
height of folly that she had not done so; and yet 
she knew that he would have kept his word and 
shot Edmund Hyde. 

Edmund!—and at the thought of him, the tears 
rose in her eyes with passionate longing. 

What would he say if he knew what was hap¬ 
pening to her? She remembered the good-natured 
way in which he had always spoken of his brother- 
in-law. 

“He’s queer, of course, but he’s all right, 
really!” 

He would not think so now, if he knew what 
she had suffered at Asher’s hands during the past 
five days. 

A burning log fell from the grate to the open 
hearth, and as Barbara moved forward to pick it 
up with the tongs, she heard a faint, indefinable 
sound at the front door. 

She stood quite still, every nerve in her body 
stiffened, till she felt as if she would never be able 
to move again, and her face felt icy cold as if a 
breath of wintry wind had passed by. 


THE MAN WITHOUT A HEART 119 

The noise came again, more insistently, as if the 
man outside was losing patience. 

Barbara made a desperate effort and spoke. 

“Who is there?” 

The sound of her own voice gave her courage, 
the beating of her heart grew quieter; after all, 
perhaps there was nothing to fear; if it was only 
money he wanted. . . . There was no answer to 
her cry and she looked desperately round the room 
for some weapon with which to defend herself, but 
there was nothing. 

The tongs—the poker—they were frail and 
would be useless if she was ever driven to use 
them. Then suddenly she remembered that Asher 
had once told her he carried a revolver. 

Had he taken it with him? Or was it still in his 
room? 

Fresh hope flooded her heart; she caught up the 
lamp and ran out of the room and upstairs to the 
little back room where Asher slept. 

She was trembling with hope and eagerness as 
she hurriedly searched round. 

His portmanteau stood empty in one corner, 
some clothes were thrown untidily across the bed, 
one drawer in the small painted chest stood partly 
open, as if it was too full to shut properly. 


120 THE MAN WITHOUT A HEART 

She dragged it open with impatient hands, and 
searched under the litter of ties and collars and 
handkerchiefs, but found nothing! 

A photograph of Linda in a small, folded, leather 
case lay uppermost, staring at her with serious 
eyes, and Barbara pushed it impatiently away. 

Downstairs she could hear the man knocking on 
the door; once above the sound of the wind and 
pouring rain she thought she heard his voice. 

She felt desperate, she looked round the room 
with wild eyes. 

The revolver! If only she could find it! . . . 
Her eyes fell on the iron bedstead behind the door. 

Perhaps it was under the pillow. She was across 
the room in a flash. 

She could have sobbed with relief when her 
fingers touched the cold steel barrel, she laughed 
aloud as with it in her hand she went back again 
down the narrow staircase, leaving the lamp behind 
her in Asher’s room. 

It was quite dark in the passage below save for 
the glow of the fire from the front room, but now 
she was no longer afraid, as, with the revolver 
clutched tightly in her hand, she moved towards 
the front door. 

“Who is there and what do you want??’ 


THE MAN WITHOUT A HEART 121 

“Open the door.” 

“I will open the door if you will tell me your 
name and what you want.” 

She thought she heard a man’s laugh, and then 
his body’s heavy weight was thrust against the 
door. The hinges strained and creaked, but held 
firmly, and the voice outside said again: 

“Open the door, or I shall break it down,” and 
when she made no reply, a second thrust came once 
more in brutal determination. 

She spoke as steadily as her throbbing heart 
would permit. “Very well—I will open it.” 

There was a second of silence, then she pulled 
back the chain and the bolt. 

The door swung in with sudden violence, bring¬ 
ing with it a swirl of rain and wet leaves. She was 
conscious of a man’s lumbering form, and hardly 
knowing what she did, Barbara raised the revolver 
and fired. 

And then for a moment she went mad; with 
her nerve gone completely she flung the little shin¬ 
ing weapon from her and screamed, hiding her face 
in her shaking hands, as she ran back into the fire- 
lit room, her arms raised above her head to ward 
off the blow she expected. 

“Don’t hurt me—don’t hurt me-” 



122 THE MAN WITHOUT A HEART 


She heard a man’s steps in the room, and felt 
his rough hands upon her, dragging her to her feet; 
then through all her terror and panic, a voice 
reached her fading consciousness, a blunt, almost 
angry voice which she recognized with a little gasp¬ 
ing sob of relief unbelievable. 

“Barbara, in God’s name what is it?—what on 
earth has happened?” 

And she looked up into Asher’s face. 

For a second she stared at him, her eyes wild 
;with a hope to which she dared not give credence; 
then, with a little hysterical cry she flung herself 
against him, clinging to him, hardly conscious of 
what she was doing or saying. 

“I thought you would never come, I thought you 
did not mean to come back any more; and there 
was a man—he tried to get in—I saw him at the 
kitchen window—he came once this afternoon— 
and I was so terrified—oh, it was cruel of you, 
cruel to leave me here! Don’t go away again— 
don’t leave me any more or I shall die. . . . 
Please, please, don’t leave me here!” 

She was sobbing wildly, and shaking so that she 
would have fallen but for the clasp of his arm, and 
for some moments he let her cry, then he put her 
into a chair. 


THE MAN WITHOUT A HEART 123 


“There is nothing to be frightened of, there is 
nobody here but me. If you will let me go for a 
moment I will get you something to drink.” 

His voice was kind, but impartial; he gave in 
with a little shrug when Barbara still clung to his 
hand; her eyes went past him fearfully to the open 
door as she said again incoherently: 

“There was a man—I saw him—and he tried to 
get in. He came this afternoon first; he knew I 
was alone—oh, don’t let him hurt me-” 

Asher spoke again with quiet patience. 

“There is nobody here to hurt you. Let me go 
a moment, and I will shut the door.” 

Her eyes searched his face suspiciously. 

“You’re not going away, you’re not going to 
leave me again?” 

“On my word of honour, no!” 

She gave a little broken laugh at that. 

“Your word of honour!—you didn’t believe in 
mine.” 

But she released him, and he went back and shut 
and fastened the door, coming into the room again 
With the revolver in his hand. 

“Where did you find this?” 

“Under your pillow. I meant to kill him if he 
got in.” 



124 THE MAN WITHOUT A HEART 
He gave a short laugh. 

“Yes, you certainly shot to kill.” He put the lit¬ 
tle weapon into his pocket. “Now, do you feel 
better?” 

“Yes.” 

“Sit still then, and I will get you something to 
eat and drink.” 

“I don’t want anything.” 

“Don’t you? Well, I do!” 

There was no apology for her fright; he was 
perfectly indifferent and self-controlled. 

Barbara lay back in the chair and closed her 
eyes; her stampeded nerves were steadier, and she 
began to feel ashamed of her breakdown. 

What a coward he must have thought her! 

When presently he came back with a clumsily 
laid supper-tray she looked at him with hot, angry 
eyes. 

“It’s your fault I made such a fool of myself. 
I’m not generally so silly. It’s all your fault and 
the strain of the past week.” 

He made no answer, he began to set the table 
with a man’s awkwardness, and in spite of her as¬ 
severation that she was not hungry, Barbara found 
herself eating with something of an appetite. 


THE MAN WITHOUT A HEART 125 


The rain had stopped, and everything seemed 
very still once more, and looking at Asher’s imper¬ 
turbable face in the firelight, it seemed that this 
day of loneliness and dread had never really been. 

When she rose to take the supper things away 
he stopped her. 

“There is no need to do that yet. There is some¬ 
thing I want you to do for me first.” 

Words of refusal rose to her lips, she hated him 
for his indifference and self-possession; she began 
to say that she had no intention of doing anything 
for him again as long as she lived, when something 
in his face checked the words. 

“What do you want me to do?” she asked. 

Asher smiled grimly. 

“I would not ask you, but, unfortunately, I can¬ 
not do it myself.” 

He began with difficulty to pull off his coat, 
which, she noticed for the first time, was sodden 
through and through with the heavy rainstorm. 

“I’ve got the bullet intended for your gentleman 
friend in my shoulder,” he said, whimsically. 

Barbara stared at him, her lips parted, her eyes 
wide. 

“The bullet—in your shoulder-” she whis- 



126 THE MAN WITHOUT A HEART 

pered; then, as he got the coat free of his shoul¬ 
der, she saw that his shirt-sleeve was stained with 
blood. 

She gave a cry, but Asher said quietly: 

“It’s nothing serious. If you will get some warm 
water and a clean piece of rag, we can soon repair 
the damage.” He smiled into her pallid face. “I 
assure you it’s nothing, Miss Weir. If you will 
kindly do as I ask you-” 

“But you ought to have a doctor.” 

He frowned impatiently. 

“Don’t be absurd; there is no doctor for miles, 
and, anyway, how do you imagine you could find 
your way to him on such a night? Besides”—a 
gleam of mischief flashed into his sombre eyes— 
“think what a scandal there would be if he 
found us here together, and I told him you had 
shot me.” 

They looked at one another for a moment in 
silence, then Barbara turned and walked out of 
the room. 

Mechanically she got hot water, and tore some 
of her handkerchiefs into rags for bandages. 

Supposing she had killed him! Her face was 
colourless as she went back to the sitting-room and 
found him standing by the fire. 



THE MAN WITHOUT A HEART 127 

He had tom the shirt from his shoulder, and 
left bare a long, zigzag, torn wound with ugly, 
sagging edges. 

“You see—it’s nothing very much,” he said, as 
he saw her horrified eyes. “Fortunately, the bullet 
only grazed my shoulder. Now, do you think you 
can bathe it, and bandage me up, or will you faint 
at the sight of blood?” 

“I am not the fainting sort,” she protested. 

He laughed. 

“No? I think you were very near it this eve¬ 
ning.” 

The hot blood swept her face. 

“I know you don’t believe me—but there was a 
man! and he did try and break into the house,” 
she said, tremulously. 

“I know.” For a moment she felt his hand on 
hers. “I saw him, but he cleared off before I could 
do anything.” Unwilling emotion filled his eyes. 
“If anything had happened to you”—he broke off 
and stopped—“I should have caught that fel¬ 
low and broken his neck for him, if you had not 
tried to kilhme,” he added, in his usual voice. “I 
think you will get at me better if I sit down.” 

Barbara knelt beside him, and washed and ban¬ 
daged his wound. As he had said, it was not much 


128 THE MAN WITHOUT A HEART 


more than a bad graze, but it had bled a good 
deal, and, being in the hollow of his shoulder, was 
difficult to bandage. 

Suddenly she broke out tremulously: 

“I might have killed you.” 

He looked down at her careful handiwork. 

“Yes, if it had been an inch nearer my throat 
there would have been a different tale to tell,” he 
agreed, coolly. 

She sat back on her heels, and looked at him. 

“What should I have done and what would have 
been done to me?” 

He laughed at the tragedy of her words. 

“They would not have done much to you.” 

“What do you mean?” she asked, not under¬ 
standing. 

“I mean that if a man deliberately kidnaps a 
woman, and shuts her up in a place like this, he de¬ 
serves all he gets, or, at least, that is what the law 
would say; they would consider that you had a 
perfect right to kill me.” 

She rose to her feet; she felt that he was laugh¬ 
ing at her. 

“I think you are the strangest man I have ever 
met,” she said in a resentful voice. 

“A man without a heart—eh?” Asher submitted, 


THE MAN WITHOUT A HEART 129 


dryly. “No, please leave those things alone for 
to-night”—as she made a movement to take up 
the supper tray. “Please go to bed—you look like 
a ghost; and remember that there is no need to be 
frightened any more. No harm will come to you 
while I am here.” 

She stood hesitating. 

“And your arm?” she asked., 

“That’s nothing. I am quite all right. I would 
not have troubled you only I was unable to dress 
it myself, and if any dirt had got in you might have 
had me as a patient for some time. Good night, 
Miss Weir.” 

Barbara went upstairs without answering. 

Her head ached violently, and her throbbing 
nerves felt as if they would never be still again, 
but one thought shone steadfastly in her mind, 
that after the events of to-day she would stand no 
more, and that, come what might, to-morrow 
should see the end of her imprisonment. 
















Chapter VI 


T HERE was a strange silence throughout the 
little cottage when very early the following 
morning Barbara crept down the stairs, her shoes 
in her hand, and paused nervously at the foot of 
the staircase. 

It was barely light; a weird greyness seemed to 
envelop everything, and outside in the wood she 
could hear the faint awakening chirp, chirp of 
sleepy birds. 

A board creaked beneath her foot, and she 
caught her breath in panic. Supposing Asher 
heard her, and at the last moment prevented her 
from escaping. 

She looked back behind her up the narrow stair¬ 
case, but there was not a sign or sound, and she 
crept on again, her heartbeats almost choking her. 

The terror of yesterday had departed, and she 
could mock at herself for her fear. Why had she 
been afraid of Asher’s threats? Edmund Hyde 
was quite capable of looking after himself; her one 
object was to get to him, and to warn him. 

131 


132 THE MAN WITHOUT A HEART 


If Rufus was indeed mad, they would know 
how to deal with him; if, as sometimes it seemed, 

he was merely a brute and a bully, well-She 

stopped, her hand on the latch of the door, as from 
the sitting-room she heard the sound of a voice 
speaking aloud. 

There was some one with Asher. 

She held her breath, listening with strained at¬ 
tention. A queer, confused jumble of words it 
sounded, and against her will she found herself 
creeping closer to the door, which stood a little 
ajar. 

Some one was with him—some one- 

Instinct it was that compelled her to push that 
closed door wider, but for a moment she could dis¬ 
tinguish nothing in the gloom; then her vision 
cleared, and she saw the dead ashes of last night’s, 
fire in the grate, the stiff legs of the trestle table 
with the remains of last night’s supper still upon 
it, and there, in the chair, she at last distinguished 
Asher’s lumbering figure. 

He looked all huddled up and shapeless, as if he 
had fallen uncomfortably asleep, or as if he were 
ill. 

Barbara forgot everything but this last possi- 



THE MAN WITHOUT A HEART 133 

bility; she dropped her shoes with a little thud to 
the floor, and took a step forward. 

“Mr. Asher.” 

Then, as he made no answer, she went hurriedly 
to the window and drew back the casement cur¬ 
tains, admitting what pale light there was to be 
had, before she turned sharply round. 

Asher had risen to his feet, and stood with a 
hand on the back of the arm-chair, swaying un¬ 
steadily. 

His face was flushed and his eyes feverish, and 
Barbara had the queer feeling that although he 
was looking directly at her he could not see her; 
then he gave a stupid sort of laugh. 

“I am sorry. I’m afraid I’ve got a bad chill. 
This rotten climate—I was soaked to the skin last 
night getting back. Don’t look so scared—it’s 
nothing. I’ve got a touch of my old friend ague, 
too. I-” 

He put his hand to his head with a little gesture 
of giddiness. 

Barbara took a step towards him. 

“Who were you talking to in here just now?” 
she asked. 

He shook his head vaguely. 



134 THE MAN WITHOUT A HEART 

“Nobody—nobody’s been here. I-” his 

voice trailed away, and he sank back heavily into 
the chair again, his head falling forward on to his 
breast. 

Barbara stood for one irresolute moment, then 
she made up her mind. 

She could not leave him in this condition; badly 
as he had treated her, she could not retaliate so 
brutally. 

She put on her shoes, took off her hat and coat, 
and proceeded to light the fire; then she fetched 
some hot milk and made him drink it. 

He made a little grimace, and smiled, but he had 
soon lost himself again in the vague, incoherent 
mutterings which had at first attracted her atten¬ 
tion. He was shivering from head to foot, al¬ 
though his head and hands were burning hot; his 
shoulder where she had shot him the night before 
was hurting badly, too, she could see, for he winced 
when she touched it. She fetched rugs and blan¬ 
kets and piled them around him, and presently 
he dozed off into a fitful sleep, only to waken again 
to resume the same wandering speech. 

Barbara stood looking at him with softened eyes. 

He was no longer a man whom she could find it 
in her heart to hate; he looked strangely helpless 



THE MAN WITHOUT A HEART 135 


and youthful as he sat there with his hair all tous¬ 
led and the fever flush in his face. Not a man 
of whom to be afraid! Perhaps a man to 
pity, or even love! She turned abruptly away 
at that last thought; how absurd! when he had 
brutally ill-treated her and made her suffer. 

She went about the work of the little house as 
usual, all her plans for flight were forgotten; and 
from time to time she went back into the sitting- 
room to pile more wood on the fire, and to watch 
Asher in his restless sleep. 

Now and then she could distinguish words in 
his mutterings—often he spoke of his sister and 
once she caught her own name; but chiefly it was 
of strange things and places that he spoke in a 
fierce, wild sort of way; and Barbara found her¬ 
self listening in fascination to this peep of the man 
as she had never known him. 

And once he laughed, a spontaneous, boyish 
laugh that brought an involuntary smile to her 
lips; then suddenly she was aware that the light 
of consciousness was in his eyes once more, and 
that he was looking at her in his old sardonic way. 

She spoke to him gently. 

“I hope you are better. Is there anything I can 
do for you?” 


136 THE MAN WITHOUT A HEART 


“Do for me?” he repeated her words vaguely, 
his feverish eyes still upon her, then suddenly he 
held out his hand. 

“Come here, Barbara.” 

She caught her breath at the unwonted gentle¬ 
ness of his voice, and the hot colour rose in her 
cheeks. 

“What do you want?” she asked, tremulously, 
but already he had forgotten his request and had 
closed his eyes again. 

She watched him all day, anxious and worried, 
not knowing what to do for the best, and too igno¬ 
rant of sickness to realize that warmth and rest 
were all that were necessary to cure him. 

She sat up with him all night, dozing fitfully now 
and then, and waking with a start of terror to the 
remembrance of where she was and what had hap¬ 
pened. 

In the morning she could see that he was not 
any better, and a morbid terror seized her that he 
might die. 

What would she do then? What would become 
of her? She sat down by the fire and hid her face 
in her hands. The events of the past days had 
shaken her to the depths of her foundations; her 


THE MAN WITHOUT A HEART 137 

nerves felt in rags; she would never have believed 
it possible that she could suffer so. 

She had always considered herself so self-pos¬ 
sessed. 

And men who’ve stayed home all their lives 
Are dancing every night with other fellows’ wives . 

The tuneful doggerel lines haunted her, irretriev¬ 
ably mixed up with the warm night scent of 
Linda’s garden, and the smell of the tobacco in 
Rufus Asher’s pipe. 

She had been wonderfully drawn to him that 
night, she had liked sitting beside him, listening to 
his queer theories of life, and his philosophy, and 
he had nearly loved her. 

She thought of the resolve she had made the 
first night at the cottage, that she would punish 
him by making herself everything to him, and she 
had failed. 

He cared no more for her now than he had done 
the day he brought her here. 

A log of wood fell smouldering to the hearth, and 
she looked up to find Asher watching her. 

She rose guiltily to her feet. 


138 THE MAN WITHOUT A HEART 

“Is there anything you want? Is there anything 
I can do for you?” 

“Nothing, thank you.” 

She stooped to replace one of the rugs that had 
slipped from about him. 

“Do you feel any better?” 

He answered her question by asking another. 

“Why didn’t you clear off and leave me?” 

Tears swam into her eyes. 

“How could I? I thought you were ill.” 

His face took on again its old grim lines. 

“In fact, you heap coals of fire on my head. Is 
that it?” 

“No, but I happen to be human.” 

“And I do not, you mean?” 

“I did not say so.” 

She took a glass of warm milk from the grate. 

“If you drink this you may sleep again.” 

“I don’t want to sleep again. I am much bet¬ 
ter.” He looked better, though his voice was still 
weak. She saw with thankfulness that the look of 
glassy feverishness had vanished from his eyes, and 
his skin felt cooler. 

“Are you often ill like this?” she asked. 

“I had one attack just before I knew you. It’s 
nothing to anyone who understands, but this time 


THE MAN WITHOUT A HEART 139 


getting wet made things worse, and my shoulder 
helped, I suppose.” 

She flushed. 

“Your shoulder ought to be dressed again.” 

“You shall do it presently.” His eyes searched 
her face. “How long have you been sitting there, 
Miss Weir?” 

“All night. It’s half-past ten now—half-past 
ten in the morning.” 

“'And you haven’t slept?” 

“I think I dozed sometimes.” 

“You heap coals of fire on my head,” he said 
again, sullenly. 

Barbara did not answer; she felt dead tired, but 
she would not admit it. 

“You have lost an excellent opportunity to run 
away from me,” he said, after a moment. 

Defiance crept into her eyes. 

“The opportunity will come again.” 

“Perhaps. When I am strong enough to run 
after you and bring you back.” 

She took away the empty glass and left him; 
when later she came back he was sleeping quietly, 
and breathing more easily. 

So he was not going to die. She drew a breath 
of relief. 


140 THE MAN WITHOUT A HEART 


It was getting dusk when Asher awoke; he 
gave a terrific yawn, stretching his arms and let¬ 
ting the rugs fall around him as he sat up and 
blinked across the firelit space at Barbara. 

“How long have I been asleep?” he demanded, 
brusquely. 

“All day.” 

He sat for a moment looking at her; then he 
rose to his feet, moving his injured arm gingerly. 

Barbara saw the stiff movement and said at 
once: 

“I will bathe your shoulder again and put fresh 
bandages on if you will let me.” 

She fetched water and strips of linen, and he sat 
passively while she carried out her task. 

Then she rose to her feet with a breathless sigh. 

“There, I think it’s better. Does it hurt very 
much?” 

“Not at all, except when I move my arm.” 

She made a movement to turn away, but he 
caught her hand. 

“How badly do you hate me, Miss Weir?” 

She shook her head. 

“I don’t hate you. I think I’m just—sorry.” 

“For me?” 

“Yes.” 


THE MAN WITHOUT A HEART 141 

He released her. 

“I won’t have you sorry for me. You can be 
sorry for yourself instead.” She looked at him 
with steady eyes. 

“You’ve no need to be sorry for me,” he said 
again, in his old harsh way. “Anything I do, or 
have done, has been deliberate. I am prepared 
to abide by the consequences.” 

She gave a wavering smile. 

“I would not like to have it on my conscience 
that I had ruined a fellow creature’s life,” she said. 

“What do you mean?” 

“I mean that if it ever gets known—as it will 
do, that I spent all this time here alone with you, 
the scandal of it will follow me all my life. Not 
that I care,” she added, scornfully. 

He sat staring before him with fierce eyes, then 
he said, with a sneer: 

“Are you suggesting that I make honourable 
reparation by asking you to marry me? Is that 
why you have stayed so willingly?” 

Barbara turned white. 

“I suppose you are deliberately trying to insult 
me,” she said. “But some day perhaps it will lie 
in my power to pay you back.” 

He laughed. 



142 THE MAN WITHOUT A HEART 

“You need not ride the high horse with me, Miss 
Weir, and nothing I have ever said to you can be 
more insulting than things you have allowed to be 
said by my estimable brother-in-law. As I believe 
I once before reminded you, I at least am unmar¬ 
ried.” 

Barbara swung round; for a moment she was 
mad with rage, mad with the insults which he had 
heaped upon her. 

“You brute! Oh, you brute!” she sobbed, and 
beside herself with rage she lifted her hand and 
struck him across the face. 

That brought her to her senses; she fell back, 
white and shaken, trembling from head to foot, 
staring at him with horrified eyes, and in the fol¬ 
lowing silence there came a sharp tap-tapping at 
the outer door. 

Asher rose to his feet and stood uncertainly 
clinging to the arms of his chair; then with a great 
effort he mastered his weakness and made a quick 
gesture, motioning Barbara aside when she would 
have moved forward. 

“Stay there. I’ll go.” 

He went out into the little passage, land Barbara 
heard him fumbling with the bolts and fastenings 
of the outer door as she crept after him. 


THE MAN WITHOUT A HEART 143 

The heavy door creaked open. 

There was a silence; then Barbara heard a 
stifled imprecation, and a man’s amazed voice: 
“Rufus! Good Lord, man, then you are here?” 
It was Edmund Hyde. 



Chapter VII 


T the sound of Hyde’s voice, Barbara gave a 



I. cry and half moved forward; then, with an 
effort, she controlled herself and stood where she 
was in the doorway, her hands pressed tightly over 
her lips, her eyes straining towards the two men. 

She could not see Asher’s face, but Edmund’s 
she saw plainly, with its frankly-amazed look and 
wavering smile. Then the hand which he had 
extended fell to his side, and he frowned. 

“Good heavens, man! What on earth’s the 
matter?” he broke out, irritably. “Aren’t you 
going to ask me in, and what in the world are you 
doing in this benighted spot? Is it a game? Are 
you a second Robinson Crusoe or Swiss Family 

Robinson, or something? And-” He broke 

off roughly as, for the first time, he saw Barbara 
standing in the doorway behind Asher. The hot 
colour rushed in an agitated wave to his good- 
natured face, and for a moment he could not 
speak; then he stammered out: 


145 



146 THE MAN WITHOUT A HEART 

“Barbara! Barbara! Good heavens, what is 
the meaning of it?” 

Barbara spoke; her words were punctuated with 
a little high, hysterical laugh. 

“It’s not in the least what it looks like, Edmund! 

It isn’t a bit of a romance, or-” She gave a 

stifled cry. “Oh, don’t let him shut the door— 
don’t let him shut the door!” For Asher had 
made a swift movement as if he would have closed 
it in Edmund’s face. 

There was a momentary struggle, half-hearted 
on Asher’s part, for he was still weak. Then Ed¬ 
mund forced his way into the narrow hall, where 
he stood flushed and rather breathless. 

“Now, if you’ll have the goodness to explain 
what the devil this means I shall be much obliged,” 
he broke out angrily. “Hullo, old chap, are you 
ill?” For Asher had swayed unsteadily. 

“Leave me alone.” He steadied himself by the 
door-frame, his face was hard and ugly, with new 
anger and bitterness. “Who sent you here?” he 
demanded. “How did you find your way here, 
and what the devil do you mean by interfering 
with me?” 

His voice had risen threateningly, his face had 



THE MAN WITHOUT A HEART 147 

flushed an ugly red, and yet he looked much more 
a sick man than a savage one, and Barbara took 
an involuntary step towards him. 

Edmund looked from one to the other with 
growing doubt and suspicion, then he shrugged 
his shoulders. 

“If I am unwelcome, as it seems, I have no wish 
to stay. We have had no word from you since 
you left the house a fortnight ago, and we were 
naturally anxious. There were letters waiting, 
and at last I opened one—it was from Australia, 
and made a reference to this place. Heaven 
knows what made me think you might be here, but 
it did occur to me, and so I came along to investi¬ 
gate-” 

“You are mighty anxious for my welfare all at 
once,” Asher sneered. 

Edmund flushed and paled, as if with some sud¬ 
den emotion. 

“I naturally thought you were the proper one 
to turn to—in the circumstances,” he said, awk¬ 
wardly. “Linda-’ ’ 

Asher took a step forward. 

“We will leave my sister’s name out of this con¬ 
versation, if you please,” he began, stiffly; but 






148 THE MAN WITHOUT A HEART 

Barbara interrupted, stepping hurriedly between 
the two men. “Edmund! Linda—what has hap¬ 
pened?” she asked, breathlessly. 

Edmund tried to answer, his face worked con¬ 
vulsively, then suddenly he hid his face in his 
hands. 

“She’s gone,” he said, hoarsely. 

“Gone!” Asher swayed forward and gripped 
his shoulder with merciless fingers. “You hound! 
What have you done to her! If anything has hap¬ 
pened, I’ll thrash you within an inch of your life! 
I-” 

“Rufus! Rufus!” Barbara caught his arm 
with both hands, dragging him away. “Oh, for 
heaven’s sake—you’ll hurt him—oh, Edmund, 
don’t—for my sake, don’t!” For Edmund had 
made a furious rush at his brother-in-law. She 
stood between them, a frail barrier dividing their 
rage and passion; then, as Edmund’s hand fell to 
his side, she said quietly: 

“He doesn’t understand. Mr. Asher doesn’t 
understand. We shall have to tell him, at 
last.” 

And there followed a tragic silence, during which 
the rage and passion died from Edmund’s white 
face, and when he spoke it was very quietly, al- 



THE MAN WITHOUT A HEART 149 


most without expression, as if he had run through 
all his emotions and found himself bankrupt of 
more. 

“Linda went away two days ago with Hugh 
Langely. She left a note for you—I have it here. 
There was nothing for me.” 

“Linda went away with Hugh Langely,” Rufus 
Asher repeated the words vaguely. “Why—well, 
where has she gone? Why with him? Why—I 
don’t understand.” He put his hand to his fore¬ 
head dizzily. “Why with Langely?” he asked 
again. 

Nobody answered; Barbara was watching him 
with pitiful eyes, and suddenly a glimmer of what 
they were trying to tell him seemed to force its 
way into his brain. 

His face flushed from chin to brow, his eyes nar¬ 
rowed; then he broke out, almost shouting: 

“You infernal scoundrel! You’re trying to 
blacken my sister’s name to shield your own dam¬ 
nable conduct; you’re trying to make me be¬ 
lieve- I’ll make you pay for this!” 

But as he lunged forward, blinded with the 
strength of his own passion, he seemed to crifmple 
and collapse, and but for Edmund’s supporting 
arms he would have fallen. 



150 THE MAN WITHOUT A HEART 

Between them they got him back into the sit¬ 
ting-room, and put him into the big chair. 

“What’s the matter with him?” Edmund asked, 
impatiently. “I feel as if I’m in some horrible 
nightmare!” 

Barbara smiled. 

“These last days have been worse than a night¬ 
mare to me,” she said, faintly. “Look, he’s com¬ 
ing round.” 

Edmund walked over to the window, and stood 
with his back turned, staring into the wood, and 
presently he heard Asher say: 

“Miss Weir, will you please leave us for a mo¬ 
ment?” 

Barbara expostulated. 

“Why need I? You can have nothing to say 
that I do not know already. Please let me stay. 
I-” 

Asher interrupted ruthlessly. 

“Will you please go?” 

And she walked out of the room without another 
word, closing the door behind her. 

Edmund turned round from the window. 

“Well?” he submitted, curtly. 

His brother-in-law was still sitting in the big 



THE MAN WITHOUT A HEART 151 


chair, but he rose, keeping one hand on the chair- 
back, as he began to speak: 

“I should like to have my say first, if you have 
no objection, and then I will listen to any—lies 
you choose to tell me.” The insult was deliber¬ 
ate, but Edmund took no notice, and the elder man 
went on. “The last night I was in your house I 
unwittingly overheard a conversation on the ve¬ 
randa between you and—and Miss Weir. I had 
already discovered that my sister was unhappy in 
her marriage, and what I heard confirmed my 
suspicions that you were not playing the game. I 
saw Miss Weir in your arms—I heard the plans 
you made with her to meet in London the following 
day, and I made up my mind that these things 
should not happen.” He stopped for a moment, 
and drew a deep breath, and now his hand was 
clenched as it rested on the chair-back; then he 
went on more quietly. “I managed to travel to 
London with Miss Weir, and to send a couple of 
wires before we left your house, with the result that 
I was met in London by a motorcar, in which I 
kidnapped her—yes, I admit it! ” he said, defiantly, 
as Hyde made an inarticulate sound. “I brought 
her down here, and have kept her here ever since, 


152 THE MAN WITHOUT A HEART 

away from you, and where she could do no harm 
to my sister. I don’t know what cock-and-bull 
story you have brought here with you, or how 
you managed to find us, but-” 

“I have told you. I opened a letter from Aus¬ 
tralia which was marked ‘Urgent. Please for¬ 
ward immediately if left,’ and in it was an allusion 
to this cottage. As I said just now, I don’t know 
what made me think you would be here, but some¬ 
thing urged me to come.” 

Asher interrupted sneeringly. 

“And now you can go, as soon as you like, and 
you will not take Miss Weir with you, if, as I sup¬ 
pose, that is the reason you have come.” 

Edmund’s face hardened. 

“I hardly imagine, from what I can see, that 
Miss Weir would wish to leave you,” he sneered. 
“But if you have any doubts, I can set your mind 
at rest. I am not here for Miss Weir’s sake at all, 
but for your sister’s.” He waited, but Asher did 
not speak, and the younger man said again, with 
a pathetic weariness: “Linda left my house two 
days ago with Langely. I have done all I can to 
find her, and have failed. My God, man!” he 
broke out in sudden agony, “why weren’t you 
there? Why have you stayed away like this? 



THE MAN WITHOUT A HEART 153 


You might have saved her—you might have saved 
her!” Asher tried to speak, but no words would 
come, and Edmund went on: “I’d had my doubts 
for some time, but I wasn’t sure! And I was 
afraid to speak for fear of precipitating matters, 
though Barbie urged me to. She knew! She was 
right all along!” He struck his hands together in 
pain. “Why didn’t I listen to her! Why didn’t 
I?” He paced away, and came back agitatedly. 
“As for what you saw on the veranda”—he made 
a contemptuous gesture, as if he were dismissing a 
thought unworthy of consideration in the face of 
the overwhelming tragedy that had come into his 
life—“you were either dreaming or you’ve exag¬ 
gerated the whole thing. I’m not in love with 
Barbara Weir, or she with me. The thing’s 
absurd! We’re good friends, and I’m fond of her; 
she’s been a brick to me—she’s done her best with 
Linda. If I’d listened to her, none of this would 
have happened; if only I’d listened!” 

Asher stood like a man turned to stone. There 
was something terrible in the expression of his 
eyes; he looked like a child who has been frigh¬ 
tened by the story of a bogey and who begs for 
contradiction. After a moment he broke out 
hoarsely: 



154 THE MAN WITHOUT A HEART 


“But I heard you, man, I heard you. With my 
own ears I heard you make the arrangement to 
meet her in London. I heard you say that you 
were glad it was all at an end at last. I heard you 


“You heard neither of us say anything we should 
have been ashamed of your hearing. And as for 
her being in my arms—pshaw! you make me tired. 
What the devil’s the matter with you? Have you 
gone mad?” 

There was a long silence. Asher stood staring 
before him as if he had forgotten where he was, as 
if he had forgotten everything. Then he said 
slowly, as if he were talking to himself: 

“And I brought her here, I treated her like a 
dog! My God, will she ever forgive me?” 

Edmund moved uneasily; he had not realized 
the enormity of what Rufus had done; he could 
think only of his wife and his own tragedy. And 
he said again in blind rage: 

“If you’d been there, Linda would not have 
gone. She loved you! She would have listened 
to you. I’ve done my best, heaven knows, but I 
suppose I failed! But to leave me for that cur! 

If ever I find him-” He began to pace the 

room like a madman. 




THE MAN WITHOUT A HEART 155 


Rufus seemed to have forgotten him; presently 
he turned slowly and walked to the door; he 
opened it, and stood for a moment staring into the 
narrow hall, which was growing dark with shadows. 

Barbara was there, sitting on the bottom stair, 
her eyes wide with fear and apprehension, her face 
white. 

For a moment they looked at one another 
silently, then Asher said in a difficult voice: 

“Why didn’t you tell me, Barbara? Why 
didn’t you tell me?” 

“Tell you? What was there to tell?” 

“What a fool I was—what an unpardonable 
fool!” 

The faintest smile flickered through her eyes. 

“Would you have believed me?” she asked. 

They both knew he would not; they both knew 
that no matter how hard she had tried to make him 
understand, her words would have fallen on deaf 
ears. 

It seemed a long time before either of them 
spoke again. Then Barbara said, with a cynical 
note in her voice: 

“I suppose this means that my imprisonment is 
at an end, and that I am free to go?” 

He seemed not to hear; presently he broke out: 


156 THE MAN WITHOUT A HEART 


“You will never forgive me! You will never 
forgive me, or believe how humiliated, how—inde¬ 
scribably—grieved-” 

The words were halting, inadequate, and yet 
they came from his heart. 

Barbara smiled. 

“If my forgiveness is worth anything to you, you 
may have it,” she said. “But no sorrow of yours 
will wipe out this past fortnight. When people 
know that I was here with you my life will be 
ruined, and nothing you can say or do will alter 
that.” 

There was a burning flush in her face, she felt as 
if her heart had grown numbed to her position, and 
that to-day it had awakened again, and was 
scorching her. 

She did not raise her eyes as she walked ino the 
room where Edmund Hyde waited. 

She went up to him, and her whole body was 
shaken with sobbing, and the tears rained from 
her eyes as she clutched his arm. 

“Take me away from here—take me away!” she 
said. 



Chapter VIII 


B ARBARA left the two men downstairs while 
she went to her room, and with trembling 
hands began hurriedly repacking the few things 
she had taken from her luggage. 

Now her captivity was at an end, and there was 
nothing to prevent her from walking out of the 
house, she felt a strange reluctance to go. 

The little room in which she had passed so many 
sleepless hours suddenly assumed friendly propor¬ 
tions; the sunlight filtering through the latticed 
window fell warmly on her face as she moved to 
and fro, folding garments and stuffing them into 
her open boxes. 

She had no idea where she was going, she had 
made no plans for the future, but she kept wonder¬ 
ing what Asher would do, and how long he would 
stay alone in the little house. 

She remembered with a pang of pity that he was 
a sick man, and she paused for a moment in her 
task of locking the large trunk, sitting back on her 
heels, and staring before her with pitying eyes. 

157 



158 THE MAN WITHOUT A HEART 

What would he do? He was homeless and 
friendless as far as she knew, now there was no 
longer even Linda to whom he could turn. 

Linda! So in spite of everything she had gone 
away with Hugh Langely, a man who was utterly 
dishonourable and unworthy of consideration. 
What would become of her? What would she do 
when he wearied of his infatuation? 

Barbara thought of the beautiful home and the 
kind, considerate husband which her friend had 
left, and all for what? For a short-lived foolish 
passion which would burn itself out with pathetic 
speed. 

What mad things people did for love, and how 
useless it seemed to be. 

Edmund called to her from the foot of the 
stairs. 

“Are you ready, Barbara?” 

She rose hurriedly. 

“Yes—if you could just come and fasten my 
luggage.” 

He came up the stairs two at a time. 

“Let’s get out of this place,” he said, abruptly. 
“If I stay here much longer I shall do or say some¬ 
thing I shall be sorry for.” 

Alarm crept into her eyes. 


THE MAN WITHOUT A HEART 159 

“Mr. Asher,” she faltered. 

Hyde shrugged his shoulders. 

“I can’t understand the fellow. How you’ve 
stayed with him so long beats me.” 

Barbara interrupted quickly, her cheeks flushing 
painfully. 

“Do you imagine that I stayed from choice?” 

“Of course not. I only- Well, the whole 

thing beats me. Do you mean to say that he never 
gave you a chance to get away?” 

“Yes—several times; but he threatened to find 
you if I did, and shoot you, and he would have 
kept his word.” She smiled, faintly. “So, you 
see, I stayed.” 

Edmund finished strapping the boxes and rose 
to his feet, looking at Barbara with critical 
eyes. 

“Is Rufus in love with you?” he demanded, after 
a moment. 

The treacherous blood rushed headlong to Bar¬ 
bara’s cheeks, but she managed to laugh. 

“Would he have treated me like this, do you 
think, if he had been?” she asked. 

“I don’t know; there are so many ways of lov¬ 
ing,” Hyde said, with unusual insight; he turned 
away and stood looking out of the window with 



160 THE MAN WITHOUT A HEART 


tragic eyes. “I could have sworn once that Linda 
loved me,” he added, brokenly. 

Barbara followed him, and slipped a hand 
through his arm. 

“Edmund, I’m so terribly sorry! More sorry 
than I can say.” 

“I know; youVe been a brick.” He looked at 
her with eyes suddenly wet. “Barbie, I wonder 
if things would have turned out all right if—if 
what Rufus thinks had been true.” 

She laughed nervously. 

“I don’t know; we’ve always been good friends.” 
She drew her hand away. “I’ll just put my hat 
on, and then we can go.” 

“I’ll take the boxes down,” Edmund said. But 
at the door he paused to look back at her. “Bar¬ 
bara, you know I ought to give Rufus a damned 
good hiding.” 

She cried out in protest. 

“Oh, no, no! He thought he was doing the 
best thing for Linda. He loved her so much; she 
was everything to him; besides, he’s ill, Edmund— 
he’s very ill, I think.” 

Edmund gave an inaudible growl. 

“Serve him right,” he said. 

Presently Barbara went downstairs. 


THE MAN WITHOUT A HEART 161 


Edmund was waiting for her at the front door. 

“I ran the car as far as I could along the foot¬ 
path,” he said. “But you’ll have to walk a little 
way. I’ve taken the luggage along.” 

She glanced apprehensively towards the sitting- 
room door. 

“Is he—is Mr. Asher-” 

“He’s in there. I should keep away from him 
if I were you.” 

Barbara hesitated, but against her will she 
thought of the night in Linda’s garden when she 
and Rufus Asher had sat in the darkness together, 
and he had talked of his life. She had been fas¬ 
cinated by the something different about him that 
set him apart from the other men she had known. 
She had called him a brute and a man without a 
heart, but always she had known that it was not 
true. His love for his sister had been something 
much above ordinary love in its strength and loy¬ 
alty, and she realized how keenly he must be suf¬ 
fering. 

Edmund had gone on to the car, and impulsively 
she went back to the sitting-room, where she had 
spent so many strange days. 

Asher was standing by the fire, his arm resting 
on the wooden shelf above it, his back turned to 



162 THE MAN WITHOUT A HEART 

her, but he looked round when she said rather 
nervously: “Good-bye, Mr. Asher.” 

He made no answer, but there was a look of such 
dumb agony in his eyes that she forgot her bitter¬ 
ness and impulsively held out her hand. 

“Oh, I am so sorry—sorry for you,” she faltered. 
“If there is anything I can do—any way in which 
I can help Linda-” 

He looked at the kind little hand extended to 
him, then he turned away, and laid his head down 
on his arms with tragic abandon. 

“Please—go!” he said, hoarsely, and without a 
word Barbara obeyed. 

Her eyes were blinded with tears as she went 
out into the sunlight, and there was a strange pain 
in her heart. 

“He might have shaken hands,” she thought. 
“After all, it is he who has injured me.” 

She met Edmund Hyde coming back to look for 
her. 

“I thought perhaps Asher-” he began. 

Barbara shook her head. 

“I offered to shake hands with him, and he 
wouldn’t,” she said, painfully. 

Hyde stared at her. 

“You — offered 


he repeated blankly. 





THE MAN WITHOUT A HEART 163 


“Well, the ways of you women are beyond me alto¬ 
gether.” 

They drove slowly down the narrow footpath, 
and out on to the main road. 

“I shall never come here again,” Barbara 
thought, and she turned her head for one last look 
at the tall trees and the dark wood, but the only 
thing she saw was Asher as she had left him with 
his broken look and bowed head. 

“It was his own fault, he has only himself to 
blame,” she told herself, but somehow it did not 
seem to help matters. 

“I shall have to take you to an hotel,” Hyde 
was saying. “I can’t very well take you back home 
with me, or there will be more scandal.” 

Barbara winced, and he hastened to add: 

“I’m sorry, my dear. You know I did not mean 
to hurt you.” 

“I don’t think anything can hurt me again,” 
Barbara answered. “And what will you do, Ed¬ 
mund, I mean about Linda?” 

“What can I do? God alone knows.” 

“We must try and find her.” 

“What is the use? She will never come back to 
me; she loves that—that blackguard too well!” 
He set his teeth. “My God! And to think that 


164 THE MAN WITHOUT A HEART 

I let him come to the house, that I ever shook 
hands with him!” 

“You didn’t know, and anyway you could not 
have stopped it.” 

“I could have killed him,” Edmund said, sav¬ 
agely. 

Barbara shivered. 

“It’s so easy to talk of killing,” she answered. 
“And what’s the use of that either? You’d be the 
sufferer in the long run.” 

“I seem to be the sufferer now.” 

It was dark when they reached London; they 
drove to the hotel where Barbara was to have 
stayed a fortnight ago, and she booked a room. 

“I don’t like leaving you here alone,” Edmund 
said, uncomfortably. “You know, Barbie, all this 
seems somehow to be my own fault. If I hadn’t 
failed Linda-” 

She answered quickly. 

“You mustn’t blame yourself. I always think 
that things like this are meant to be, and cannot 
be avoided.” 

He took her hand, and held it hard. 

“You’re a good pal, Barbara.” 

“Am I? That’s the first nice thing that has 
been said to me for ages,” she told him. “Mr. 



THE MAN WITHOUT A HEART 165 

Asher-” She broke off; it hurt intolerably to 

remember the bitter, sneering things he had said 
to her. 

“Oh, Asher! He’s a madman!” Edmund 
said. 

She shook her head. 

“I thought so once, but I don’t now. It’s only 
just that he’s different from us, Edmund—more 
honest; I think that’s it, really, only we call it 
primitive! I am sure that he really thought he was 
justified in—in what he did to me. I’m sorry for 
him.” She flushed beneath his quizzical eyes. 
“I mean it,” she said, bravely. “I am sorry for 
him. I think in his own way he is suffering far 
more than any of us.” 

And she was right. Rufus Asher lived through 
the most terrible moments of his life as he stood in 
the silent room of the little cottage listening to the 
sound of Barbara’s departing footsteps. 

It seemed that with one cruel blow he had lost 
everything he had held dear, and he himself was 
responsible. 

He thought of Barbara as she had been when 
he first met her, of her strange attraction for him, 
her simplicity and sweet friendliness. 

God! what a villain he had been; nothing could 



166 THE MAN WITHOUT A HEART 


ever wipe away the memory; and yet at the last 
she had offered him her hand and her pity! 

He stood for a long time where she had left him, 
and a great, unbreakable silence seemed to have 
fallen on the world. 

The bitter, angry words of his brother-in-law 
swept through his mind: 

“How are you going to explain things to people? 
Every one knows that something strange has hap¬ 
pened to Barbara. Damn it all, man, you’ll have 
to marry her, and that’s all there is to it.” 

Marry her! Was it likely that she would even 
listen to such a proposal? And yet—and in this 
lay the very core of his suffering—he knew that in 
spite of the way he had tried to force himself to 
hate and despise her, he had only succeeded in 
loving her with every beat of his heart. 

And for his punishment he knew, too, that she 
cared so little for him that she could even find it 
in her heart to pity him for the fool he had been, 
the unconscionable brute. 

His life was devastated; the sister he had adored 
and trusted had betrayed his trust, and the woman 
who might have grown to love him had fled from 
him with thankfulness. 

That last night at his sister’s, when he had come 


THE MAN WITHOUT A HEART 167 


out of his room and found Linda on the stairs, he 
knew whom he had expected to find! In his heart 
he had suspected Barbara of every vile deception 
to which a woman could stoop, and she had been 
innocent. 

Would she forgive him? He dared not hope 
that she would. 

He had been mad to come home; he might have 
known that he was out of the picture for ever; far 
better to have stayed amongst the people who 
understood him, and who were rough and primitive 
like himself. 

A smouldering log falling with a clatter to the 
hearth roused him at last, and he looked up to 
find the sunshine gone, and the room grey and 
shadowy. 

He moved, and going out into the narrow pas¬ 
sage shut and locked the front door. 

For to-night he must stay here at all events; to¬ 
morrow—what to-morrow was there? 

He found the lamp and lit it, and pulled the cur¬ 
tains over the windows, shutting out the wood and 
the tall trees. 

As he turned back to the fire his foot touched 
some little object lying on the floor—a glove— 
Barbara’s glove. 


168 THE MAN WITHOUT A HEART 


He stooped and picked it up; it felt warm, 
almost human to his cold hand, as he stood looking 
down at it. 

She had gone out of his life; he had only ever 
held her by brutal chains which had hurt her, and 
now she was free. 

The room seemed filled with her. He saw her 
with fear in her eyes as on that first night; he saw 
her smiling bravely, making her poor little over¬ 
tures of friendship; he saw her white and uncon¬ 
scious as she had been when she fell at his feet. 

And men who’ve stayed home all their lives 
Are dancing every night with other fellows’ 
wives - 

The doggerel lines came back to torture him, 
and then for the first time a new doubt swept into 
his aching, jealous mind. 

Supposing all that Edmund had told him was a 
lie? Had he allowed himself to be too easily con¬ 
vinced? Supposing it was all a trumped-up story 
in order to take Barbara away with him? 

His face flushed and the big veins stood out on 
his forehead. 

They had made a fool of him, Edmund and Bar- 



THE MAN WITHOUT A HEART 169 


bara. He could see it all now! They had told 
him their plausible story, and he, like the fool he 
was, had believed it. 

God! What a fool! 

In his weak, shaken state it was easy to con¬ 
vince himself afresh; every memory of them 
seemed proof of this new thought. 

And he had let them go—and together! Per¬ 
haps even now they were laughing at his credulity; 
perhaps even now she was in Edmund’s arms as 
he had imagined she had been that night at 
Linda’s. 

For a moment he went mad; pain and his own 
desire rose in his heart and fought down common 
sense and sanity. 

To find them, that was all he wanted, the only 
desire left to him. 

They had got two hours’ start of him—two 
hours in a fast car! But time and distance were 
nothing to his bitter jealousy; and presently he 
was out in the darkening wood, striding down the 
narrow pathway where the marks of Edmund 
Hyde’s car-wheels still showed in the soft ground, 
and the little cottage was left alone. 















Chapter IX 


I N spite of Barbara’s objection, Edmund had 
insisted on paying for her rooms at the Lon¬ 
don hotel. 

“You’ve suffered disgracefully at the hands of 
my precious brother-in-law,” he said, obstinately. 
“And at least you must let me do this to try and 
make up to you in some small way. After all,” 
and he smiled, “we are good friends, Barbie.” 

“Yes, I know, but- Oh, very well!” She 

was too tired to argue. She gave in resignedly and 
stood by, while he engaged a bedroom and sitting- 
room for her. 

“I shan’t be here long,” she told him, as they 
turned away from the bureau together. “I must 
get something to do. I’ve come to the conclusion 
that laziness doesn’t suit me. Besides, I haven’t 
enough money.” 

Hyde flushed. 

“I wish you’d let me help you.” 

Barbara laughed and shook her head. 

“Thank you, but I like my independence.” 
171 



172 THE MAN WITHOUT A HEART 

She held out her hand remorsefully, struck by the 
mortification in his face. “Don’t look like that; 
you’ve been very kind to me. I only wish I could 
help you, Edmund. What are you going to do 
about Linda?” 

“What can I do? She hates me. She won’t 
live with me again, I know that.” He made a 
hopeless gesture. “Every one says I ought to 
divorce her, and I would if I thought there was a 
certainty of that cur marrying her.” 

“If Mr. Asher-” Barbara began, and 

stopped. 

Hyde laughed. 

“If Asher gets on Langely’s track,” he said, “it 
will mean a broken neck.” 

“And when shall I see you again?” Barbara 
asked, as they said good-bye. She dreaded being 
left. 

“I’ll come to-morrow. I’ll come early,” he 
promised. He lifted her hand to his lips. 
“Good-bye, Barbie, and God bless you.” 

Barbara made no answer, but there were smart¬ 
ing tears in her eyes as she went upstairs. 

The strain of the last weeks had told upon her 
more severely than she had guessed. She felt as 
if she was on the verge of a bad breakdown as she 



THE MAN WITHOUT A HEART 173 

shut the door and walked over to the fire in the 
little sitting-room. She clenched her hands and 
bit her lip to keep back the tears of sheer weak¬ 
ness that would rise. 

I won t cry I won’t,” she told herself, fiercely. 
“There’s nothing for me to cry about. I’m safe, 
and I’m free.” 

She took off her hat and coat and bathed her 
face in cold water. 

She felt better, and began to unpack her boxes, 
shaking out the crumpled frocks. 

One, the frock she had worn that last night at 
Linda’s, she held for some time, looking at it with 
a queer expression in her eyes. 

It seemed to bring back the warm silence of the 
garden, and the deep, attractive voice of Rufus 
Asher as he sat beside her under the big tree and 
told her about the life from which he had come. 

She had thought a great deal about Asher after 
they parted; she had lain awake for a long time 
with the rumble of that haunting fox-trot tune in 
her head, thinking of his cynical words and the con¬ 
trasting gentleness of his smile. 

And men who’ve stayed home all their lives 
Are dancing every night with other fellows’ wives. 


174 THE MAN WITHOUT A HEART 


Well, it was true. There were so many cases 
of which she herself knew where the modern love 
of gaiety and amusement had sown the first seed 
of dissension between husband and wife, and 
finally ended in disaster. 

Barbara loved fun and dancing as much as any 
other girl, but there had been times when she had 
longed for something better, to which she could not 
put a name. 

“This man is different, quite different,” had been 
her first thought after her talk in the garden with 
Rufus Asher. “This man is some one worth 
while.” 

He had soon shown her her mistake, for he had 
accused her, without giving her a chance to deny or 
defend herself, of an unspeakable thing, and he 
had treated her with the utmost contempt and dis¬ 
respect. 

“I ought to hate him,” she thought, in wonder 
and helplessness. “And yet I don’t! I’m only 
sorry for him.” 

And she wondered what he was doing, and who 
would dress his wounded shoulder for him. 

Nevertheless she slept well and dreamlessly that 
night, and woke late into the morning to find sun- 


THE MAN WITHOUT A HEART 175 

light in her room and to see by her watch that it 
was past ten. 

She rang for her breakfast and began to dress. 

There was nothing to hurry for, no fires to light 
this morning, or breakfast to lay for a surly giant, 
but she thought of the little living-room at the 
cottage with strange wistfulness. 

Was Asher still there? What was he doing? 

Poor man! After all, he had suffered much, 
must still be suffering. 

His love for his sister was the best thing in his 
life and it had been betrayed. 

As Barbara was brushing her hair the telephone 
bell whirred. 

“That you, Barbie?” 

“Yes—oh, yes, Edmund.” 

“I’m sorry. I can’t get round till after lunch. 
I hope you’ll be all right.” 

She laughed, trying to hide her disappointment. 

“Quite all right. What time will you come?” 

“As soon as I can, about three, I hope. Will 
you be in?” 

“I will wait for you. And, Edmund, is there 
any news of Linda?” 

She heard his short, unhappy laugh. 


176 THE MAN WITHOUT A HEART 


“Yes. You’ll know soon. Good-bye.” 

She rang off and went back to the dressing-table. 
She had counted on seeing Edmund that morning. 

She laid down the brush, and poured out a fresh 
cup of tea. 

No need to hurry after all; she had all the morn¬ 
ing to get through. 

The fire had been lit in the little sitting-room, 
which led from her bedroom, and she took the tea 
in there and sat down in a big chair, resting her 
feet on the fender. 

It was strange how her thoughts turned again 
and again to Asher. 

What was he doing? Who had got his breakfast 
for him? 

“I don’t know why I bother about him,” she 
thought. “He was a brute to me. I don’t know 
why I give him a thought.” 

There was a knock at the door, and she turned. 

“Come in.” 

There was the barest hesitation, and then Rufus 
Asher walked into the room. 

Barbara sat like a figure of stone, her lips parted, 
her eyes wide, staring blankly at him; then she 
rose stiffly to her feet. 

“Mr. Asher- 


Her voice was only a whis- 



THE MAN WITHOUT A HEART 177 


per, and her heart beat so fast that it seemed to 
be choking her. 

Asher shut the door and came forward. 

“Yes—I suppose you were hardly expecting 
me?” 

Barbara put her cup down on the table; she 
was trembling violently, and she raised one shaking 
hand to push back the loose waves of hair which 
fell about her face and shoulders. 

“Why are you here? Who allowed you to 
come up? Is Edmund—is he-” 

Asher laughed roughly. 

“Edmund! I knew that was it.” He stood 
still for a moment, breathing fast, staring at her 
with a strange expression in his eyes; then he 
strode forward and caught her wrist in fingers of 
steel. 

“A pretty fool youVe made of me, you and he,” 
he said, thickly. 

In spite of his roughness, the touch of his fingers 
upon her wrist seemed to steady her, and her voice 
was almost controlled as she answered him. 

“I don’t know what you mean. What is the 
matter? If you are ill-” 

He seemed not to hear. 

“I was a fool to believe you. I ought to have 




178 THE MAN WITHOUT A HEART 

seen through the game. How did you let him know 
where you were? How did he find you? Tell me 
—tell me.” 

He shook her as if she had been a child, and 
Barbara caught her breath. 

“Mr. Asher, if you are a gentleman-” 

“I’m not. I don’t pretend to be, but I’m 
honest. You got word somehow to Edmund 
Hyde, to your—lover! And he came—he came 
with that precious cock-and-bull story about Linda 
—about my sister—and I was fool enough to be¬ 
lieve you both. It was only afterwards, when you 
had gone, that I realized how easily I’d been 
fooled! Fooled!” 

He was mad, she told herself, and yet there was 
no terror of him in her heart, and her voice was 
gentle when she spoke. 

“You are wrong, quite wrong in what you think. 
Mr. Hyde is not here, and he has never been 
anything to me, anything but a friend! He loves 
his wife, your sister. Oh, Mr. Asher, please be¬ 
lieve me. Some day you’ll be sorry-” 

He broke in with a harsh laugh. 

“Sorry! I’m sorry now! Sorry that when I 
had you all to myself I didn’t make you mine. I 




THE MAN WITHOUT A HEART 179 


was a fool! Why need I have hung back for a 
scruple when he—that blackguard-” 

With a sudden, fierce movement he caught her 
in his arms. 

“I want you. I’ve always wanted you. Be¬ 
fore I knew anything of this I wanted you. It was 
love then. I could have worshipped you as no 
woman has ever been worshipped, if you’d been 
what I thought you to be. But what does it mat¬ 
ter?” He bent his head over her. “Kiss me, 
Barbara. I don’t care what you are—what you’ve 
been-” 

She fought him with all her strength. 

“Oh, you are cruel, cruel! Let me go—let me 
go! For God’s sake, I beg of you think what you 
are doing.” 

He only laughed. 

“I love you. Turn your face to me; let me kiss 
you.” 

“I beg of you—I beg of you-” 

“It’s too late. I don’t care any more for 
scruples and fine conventions. I’ll take you back 
to the cottage or abroad, anywhere you like.” 
He caught her hand and lifted it to his lips. “I 
can love you as well as Edmund or any other 





180 THE MAN WITHOUT A HEART 

man-” He broke off as he felt her relax in his 

arms. 

She had not fainted, but for a moment she 
leaned helplessly against him, her face as white as 
death, and the tears tumbling sorrowfully down 
her cheeks. 

“Ruffo!” It was the first time she had ever 
called him by his Christian name, and the sound 
of it spoken in her voice was like a gentle hand 
laid on the heat of his passion. 

For a moment he hesitated, and in that moment 
she seized her chance. 

“Let me tell you something before—before you 
make me hate you for ever. I suppose anything 
I can say will be useless—quite useless; but if you 
will listen to me for a moment. Rufus, I could 
have loved you if you had let me. That night— 
at Linda’s—I thought of you so much after we 
said good night. I thought how much more worth 
while you were than any other man I knew.” 

He took his arms from about her and stood back 
a step, staring at her, and she went on again, all 
the time feeling her own helplessness. 

“I would have married you then if you had asked 
me. I hated leaving your sister’s house, because 



THE MAN WITHOUT A HEART 181 

—it meant leaving you! That is the truth, that 
is the truth/’ she said, faintly. 

There was a great silence; then Asher laughed, 
a brutal laugh of sheer disbelief. 

“And you expect me to believe you?” he 
scoffed. “You’re clever, you’re more clever than 
I thought. But I’m wise to you now! You’re 
mine, and I’m not going to leave you again. They 
let me come up to your room because I told them 
you were my wife—I ” 

Barbara gave a choking cry. 

“Oh, you brute! You brute!” 

“Brute! Am I any more of a brute than the 
cur who brought you here—who got you away 
from me by a trick? There is nothing to choose 
between us.” 

She made a last desperate effort. 

“Mr. Hyde left me last night. I have not seen 
him since. Ask the hotel people-” 

He cut in savagely. 

“Ask them! There is no need to ask them. I 
have seen the register, and seen these rooms taken 
in Hyde’s name. I have seen-” 

“That is a lie!” 

He took a step towards her. 





182 THE MAN WITHOUT A HEART 

“Lie or not, what do I care? I saw it for my¬ 
self—but it’s nothing!” 

“Rufus!” 

She fought feebly against the strength of his 
arms, and in spite of her fear and despair there was 
yet a tinge of something which was strangely like 
happiness in her heart. 

What was the matter with her? Was she as 
mad as he, that she did not hate him? 

She felt his lips on hers, strangely gentle, and she 
closed her eyes as there came a soft rapping at 
the door. 

Asher heard it too, and, involuntarily his arms 
relaxed. Barbara rallied with a supreme effort 
and tore herself free. 

She stumbled across the room and dragged open 
the door. She forgot her dishevelled appear¬ 
ance; then as she saw who stood outside she fell 
back with a strangled cry, for it was Asher’s sis¬ 
ter! 

The only sound that broke the silence was the 
man’s heavy breathing. 

He stood with his big hands clasped into fists, 
his eyes fierce, and ugly patches of red streaking 
his face. He looked like a man who has suddenly 
been roused from sleep, or who has struggled out 


THE MAN WITHOUT A HEART 183 

of delirium, as he stared at his sister with dazed 
eyes, swaying on his feet. Linda spoke first. 

“I suppose I may come in?” 

There was defiance in her pretty voice, and when 
neither her brother nor Barbara^ answered, she 
shrugged her shoulders with a reckless movement 
as she came forward, shutting the door quietly 
behind her. 

“I’ve been to see Edmund, and he threw me out 
and shut the door in my face.” 

Nobody answered, but a little inarticulate sound 
broke from Rufus, as if her careless words had 
mortally hurt him, but she went on: “I’m not 
blaming him; I deserved everything he said. I’ve 
treated him rottenly, I know, but I thought—I 
suppose I was a fool—but I thought he cared 
enough to take me back. Now I realize what a 
mistake I’ve made.” Her white face quivered into 
a smile as she looked at her brother. “You always 
said it was possible to forgive anyone anything, if 
only you loved them enough, Ruffo. You were 
wrong! It isn’t, or else he never really cared.” 
She drew a deep breath, and her eyes—strangely 
haunted eyes they were—with deep shadows be¬ 
neath them—sought Barbara’s. “I don’t know 
why I’ve come to you; Edmund said you hated 


184 THE MAN WITHOUT A HEART 


me, and that you would never forgive me for what 
has happened.” 

Barbara looked up. “I don’t hate you,” she 

said, painfully. “I’m only sorry—sorry-” 

Her voice broke on a sob. 

A flicker of pain crossed Linda’s face but was 
gone instantly. 

“I’m sorry, too,” she said, in a dull sort of way. 
“But it’s no use saying that. The past is gone, 
and I brought it upon myself. I was mad, I sup¬ 
pose. I think all people are a little mad when they 
fall in love. But that isn’t what I came to say. 
I came to say that I was sorry that, through me, 
Ruffo treated you as he has. It’s my fault, all of 
it. He cared for me so much. I drove him to it, 
didn’t I, Ruffo?” Asher made no answer, but a 
little shudder passed through his big frame, and 
Linda went on: “I want you to forgive him.” 
She spoke in a bewildered sort of way. “Perhaps 
you have forgiven him, as he is here? I don’t 
know. Edmund told me where you were staying, 
and I came because—because I know you are kind 
and tolerant.” Her voice changed suddenly, as 
if the dam of her self-control had broken at last, 
letting loose the flood of shame and remorse which 
was rending her. She stumbled forward and fell 



THE MAN WITHOUT A HEART 185 

at Barbara’s feet, clasping her round the knees and 
hiding her face. “Don’t send me away as he did! 
Don’t send me away—I’ve nowhere to go—nobody 
to turn to. I’m frightened! I’m so frightened!” 

Rufus took a quick step forward, and with a 
hand on his sister’s shoulder forced her to raise her 
head and look at him. 

“It’s true, then? You went away with 
Langely?” 

“Yes.” 

“Where is he?” 

“I don’t know.” She closed her eyes as if she 
were fainting. “I don’t know. He left me.” 
The last words were only a broken whisper, and 
when they died away a terrible silence fell on the 
room. 

Barbara looked at Asher, and she took a quick 
step between him and Linda, her hands out¬ 
stretched to keep him back. 

“No, no, don’t hurt her!” for she saw such a 
look of mad rage and passion in his eyes that she 
was terrified. “No, no, don’t hurt her, she’s suf¬ 
fered enough,” she said. Her face was beautiful 
in its gentleness and compassion as she stooped 
and lifted Linda to her feet. 

“Don’t be frightened. Don’t be frightened. 


186 THE MAN WITHOUT A HEART 

It’s all right. You can stay with me—you can stay 
with me, I promise.” 

And without another look at the man who had 
wronged her so terribly, she went past him with 
her arm still round Linda’s sobbing figure and into 
the bedroom beyond, shutting the door. 

Asher stood where they had left him. The rage 
and passion had died from his face, leaving him 
with an old and beaten look. 

He had thought himself so right, so strong, and 
after all he had been swept away by his own arro¬ 
gance and narrowness. He had heaped insults 
and indignities on the woman he loved, and he 
should have been at her feet in homage and humil¬ 
ity. 

It was the end of everything; there was no 
longer a place for him in this England which he 
had so despised and scorned. 

He must go away, back to the land where hard 
work and privation had made him the hard, unjust 
judge that he was, and try and forget. That was 
all that was left to him. 

From behind the closed door he could hear the 
sound of passionate sobbing, and Barbara’s voice, 
gently soothing and comforting, and each word she 
spoke was like a knife turned in his heart. 


THE MAN WITHOUT A HEART 187 


She would never forgive him; he dared not ask 
or expect it. She would go all the days of her life 
hating him, shrinking from the sound of his name, 
and from the memory of the past weeks. 

And she could have loved him! He had heard 
it from her own lips. Surely his punishment was 
more than he could bear! 

Then the dividing door opened, and she stood 
there before him. She had twisted up her tumbled 
hair, the sweet, soft hair which in his madness he 
had kissed, and there were marks of tears on her 
face, but her eyes were steady and her voice un¬ 
emotional when she spoke. 

“I will take care of Linda; there is no need for 
you to wait.” 

They looked at one another for a long moment, 
and Asher knew it was good-bye. He would never 
see her again, and of all the passionate words that 
were surging in his heart he could not utter one. 

When at last he found his voice it was hoarse 
with the depths of the emotions which were chok¬ 
ing him. 

“I can’t ask you to forgive me—I can’t tell you 
what I feel. I should like to fall at your feet—as 
—my sister did—and say—as she did—‘Don’t 
send me away, don’t send me away. I’ve nowhere 


188 THE MAN WITHOUT A HEART 

to go—nobody to turn to’—but I know it would 

be—useless-” 

There was an agonized note of questioning in the 
last word, but the seconds passed and Barbara 
made no answer, and he drew a hard breath, and 
turned blindly. “I’ve only one excuse,” he said, 
thickly, “which will be no excuse to you, I know. 
I loved you.” 

He waited yet another moment, but Barbara 
did not speak, and he went out, shutting the door 
behind him. 

Barbara went back to where Linda sat crouched 
by the fire. Asher had gone. She tried to feel 
glad, to tell herself that now all her troubles were 
at an end, and that she need never see him again, 
but Linda’s first words killed the thought. 

“Oh, Barbie, you did forgive him, didn’t you? 

“Forgive him!” 

Linda rose. She looked forlorn and wretched 
enough; all her prettiness seemed to have been 
washed away in the passionate floods that had 
swept over her during the past weeks. 

“She looks old—old!” was the thought in Bar¬ 
bara’s heart, but she only said: 

“Forgive him? Why should I forgive him? I 
never deserved to be treated as he treated me.” 



THE MAN WITHOUT A HEART 189 

Linda crept up and diffidently touched her hand. 

“Yet you can forgive me/’ she whispered; “and 
what I’ve done is so much—worse!” 

Barbara turned away, the hot colour rushing to 
her face. 

Yes, that was true. And she sought vainly in 
her mind for the explanation. It was there in her 
heart though she would not admit of its existence, 
there in her heart, waiting to be recognized and 
claimed. But she said: 

“Don’t let us talk of it; please don’t let us talk 
of it. I want to forget—forget.” 

Linda laughed, a tragic little laugh. 

“If only one could forget! If one could only 
take hold of memory and destroy it, but we can’t! 
We can’t! It’s there for ever, for ever.” 

She began to pace the room feverishly, bright 
colour burning her haggard face. 

“Oh, I’ve been a fool! A fool!” she said, strik¬ 
ing her little useless hands together. “I thought 
he was so different! I thought he would love me 

for ever, and then-” Her voice fell to a tragic 

whisper. “Barbie, he never meant to marry me, 
he never, even in his thoughts, raised me to the 
dignity of his wife.” 

Barbara cried out at the pain in her voice. 



190 THE MAN WITHOUT A HEART 

“Oh, he is a brute! A brute! I hope there will 
be a special little hell for such men.” 

“You called Ruffo a brute,” Linda said. “But 
he would never treat a woman as Hugh Langely 
has treated me. Oh, I must have been mad! I 
must have been mad!” 

“Forget it, my dear! Try and forget it—I’ll be 
your friend always. I’ll never leave you whatever 
happens.” 

Linda fell to bitter sobbing. 

“I wish I could die. I wish I could die.” 

Barbara stroked her hair with gentle fingers. 

“You’ve got Rufus,” she said. 

It was difficult for her to speak Asher’s name. 
“He loves you, he’ll never leave you.” 

“Ruffo!” Linda raised her tragic eyes. “He’s 
done with me too. I knew it as soon as I came into 
the room and saw him. He’ll never forgive me, 
because of you! He’ll blame me to the end of my 
life, and he*s right, because whatever he did to 
you it was done for me. It was my fault! Oh, 
I’m not fit to live. Edmund was right, I’m not fit 
to live.” 

“Edmund is wicked to have said such a thing,” 
Barbara cried, indignantly. “None of us are such 
saints that we can afford to throw stones.” 


THE MAN WITHOUT A HEART 191 

Linda caught Barbara’s hand and raised it to 
her lips. 

“You’re an angel. I’m not worth it. You would 
do far better to leave me to myself. I’m no good 
to any one.” 

Barbara soothed her as best she could. 

“You’re ill and tired. We’ll have something to 
eat, and then you must rest. I’ll stay with you, I 
promise you I will.” 

She made Linda take some food, and persuaded 
her to lie down. 

“I shall not be able to sleep. I only wish I 
could,” were Linda’s last sobbing words. “I only 
wish I could go to sleep and never wake up any 
more.” 

But she fell into a fitful doze, and Barbara sat 
beside her, lost in thought, every nerve in her body 
aching. 

“I’ve only one excuse—I loved you.” 

The words haunted her, and would not be driven 
from her thoughts. 

What would he do? Where would he go? Not 
that she cared, but- 

The telephone bell whirred from the next room, 
and she rose and went to answer it. 

“Mr. Hyde to see you, madam!” 



192 THE MAN WITHOUT A HEART 

She had forgotten that Edmund was coming that 
afternoon. She spoke hurriedly in answer. 

“Tell Mr. Hyde I cannot see him, that I am en¬ 
gaged—that I will write.” 

“Mr. Hyde is on his way up to your room, 
madam.” 

So it was too late! 

She hung up the receiver, and went back to 
Linda, dreading to find her awake; but she was 
still lying with closed eyes, and breathing gently, 
and Barbara went back to the sitting-room, closing 
the door tightly. 

She heard Edmund’s knock almost at once, and 
went to admit him. 

“You can’t come in. I’m sorry, but-” 

“Can’t come in? What has happened? I want 
to tell you about Linda. Let me in, Barbara, I’m 
half off my head with worry.” 

Barbara hesitated, then told him the truth. 

“Linda is here, now, with me.” 

“Here! With you?” 

She saw the dull red that flooded his face, and 
the sudden trembling of his mouth, and she said: 

“She’s very unhappy, Edmund. I don’t think 
she can bear any more. She’s asleep now. Please 
leave her alone.” 



THE MAN WITHOUT A HEART 193 

“She came to me this morning. I was a brute. 
I drove her away. I’ve been mad with remorse 
since. I’m afraid—oh, my God! you don’t know 
the hell I’ve gone through.” He raised his 
clenched fists. “If I find Langely—my God, I’ll 
kill him.” 

“Hush, hush! ” She looked back apprehensively 
to the closed door. “Don’t wake her, Edmund— 
let her sleep while she can.” 

He caught her hand. 

“You’ll take care of her? You’ll be kind to her? 
My poor little girl.” 

“You know I will.” 

“And tell her—tell her-” He broke off, his 

face working, and for a moment he could not con¬ 
tinue; then he said huskily: “If there’s anything 
I can do for her—anything! I didn’t mean to be 
a brute.” 

“I know. I’ll tell her.” 

“And you’ll write to me?” 

“Yes.” 

“God bless you!” He wrung her hand hard and 
went away, and Barbara tiptoed softly into the 
room where Linda slept; but she had not moved: 
she was lying with one hand beneath her cheek as a 
child sleeps, her lips parted and the tears wet on 



194 THE MAN WITHOUT A HEART 

her face. She looked almost like a child, she 
looked almost as innocent, and yet during the past 
few days dishonour and misery had made ship¬ 
wreck of her life. 

Barbara drew up a chair and sat down. 

“I’ve only one excuse—I loved you.” 

How the words haunted her! She put her hands 
over her ears with the hope that she could shut 
them out, but it was impossible. 

“I loved you—I loved you!” 

They filled the room to the exclusion of all else 
beside; they were with her when at last she fell 
into a troubled sleep of sheer exhaustion. 

It was getting dark when she woke; the fire was 
out and the room was cold and filled with shadows. 

The yellow light from a street lamp outside 
shone into the room like a watchful eye, and Bar¬ 
bara started up, her heart beating fast, bewildered, 
forgetting where she was. 

Then memory returned, and she crossed the 
room, and groped for the electric switch. 

How long had she slept? And what had become 
of Linda? 

Then she turned towards the bed, and saw that 
it was empty. 

There was a little hollow where Linda had lain, 


THE MAN WITHOUT A HEART 195 

and the rumpled pillow—and something pinned to 
it. 

Barbara’s hands were like ice as she stumbled 
across the room, and snatched up the paper with 
its hastily scribbled message: 

I can’t bear it, I can’t go on living. God bless 
you for being so good to me. I kissed you just now 
as you slept. Good-bye .— Linda. 

Gone! For a moment Barbara felt that the 
shock had turned her to stone. Gone! To what? 
To death? Oh, no! Not that! 

Power of thought and action came back to her 
with the dread, and a moment later she was out in 
the street and breathlessly directing a taxi-driver 
to Edmund Hyde’s hotel. 

“And hurry, hurry, hurry!” she sobbed. 









Chapter X 


B UT for all Barbara Weir’s breathless hurry 
she was too late, and two days dragged by 
on leaden feet before the disinterested thousands 
who had never heard of Linda Hyde, or the trag¬ 
edy of her life, read in a newspaper paragraph that 
“the body of a woman found in the Thames has 
been identified as that of Linda Mary Hyde, wife 
of Edmund Hyde of Great Longton, Surrey,” and 
there followed the usual kindly suggestions of a 
nervous breakdown and expressions of sympathy 
with “the heart-broken husband.” 

And that was the end of the search. They had 
been days of nightmare to Barbara, and it was with 
a sense of unutterable relief that she knew the 
suspense was ended. 

“If only I’d kept awake that afternoon! If 
only I hadn’t let myself sleep!” she said passion¬ 
ately many times to Edmund. “I blame myself— 
I blame myself.” 

“That’s absurd,” he answered, roughly. “You 
are to blame less than any of us. You were kind 

197 


198 THE MAN WITHOUT A HEART 


to her-” and he stopped, choked by the mem¬ 

ory of the last time he saw his wife, and the way 
in which he had driven her from him. “If only I 

can shield her memory-” he said again after a 

moment. “But people are talking, they are bound 
to talk.” 

But the truth never really came out, though 
there were many conjectures and unkind sugges¬ 
tions. 

“The past will bury itself,” Barbara comforted 
him. “It’s wonderful how quickly things are for¬ 
gotten.” 

Edmund laughed mirthlessly. 

“According to Asher, this will never be forgot¬ 
ten until he stands face to face with Langely,” he 
said, grimly. “And when he does—well, God help 
Langely.” 

Barbara made no reply; she had not spoken to 
Asher since that day in the hotel, though once or 
twice she had caught glimpses of him, and been 
grieved by the change and tragedy in his face. 

He had taken Linda’s death more to heart than 
any of them; his love for her had been the great¬ 
est thing in his life, and Barbara knew that he 
would never cease to blame himself for not having 
been kinder on that last tragic afternoon. 




THE MAN WITHOUT A HEART 199 

“Mr. Asher—what will he do?” she asked Ed¬ 
mund, timidly, and Edmund shook his head. 

“Don’t ask me! I don’t profess to understand 
the fellow. He looks as ill as a dog, I know that. 
I suppose he’ll go back to Australia-” 

He had tried to make friends with his brother- 
in-law, and Asher had done his best to respond, 
but both men were aware of failure. 

Asher had refused to stay in Edmund’s house. 

“I’m better alone,” had been his excuse. “This 
place is haunted for me.” 

So it was! At every corner he seemed to come 
face to face with the sad-eyed ghost of his sister 
and the sound of her laugh. One night, when cir¬ 
cumstances had forced him to stay in the house, he 
had not been able to sleep for the haunting sound 
of a foxtrot tune rattled out on a gramophone, as 
he had once heard it. 

And men who’ve stayed home all their lives 
Are dancing every night with other fellows’ wives. 

His madness and folly had dated from that night, 
and now the result would have no ending, would 
never end until the sun went down on his life. 

He tried not to think of Barbara, but she was 



200 THE MAN WITHOUT A HEART 


never out of his thoughts; coming out of his room, 
he seemed to see again her little slippers with their 
high red heels as he had seen them outside her 
door, he seemed to see her turning to smile good¬ 
night to him, and to hear her voice again, “See you 
in the morning-” 

What a fool he had been! Surely madness had 
taken possession of him, and had only left him now 
to the bitterness of sanity. 

He went back to London as soon as Linda was 
buried, and for a week he roamed about, too 
wretched to make plans, just killing time, and 
wearing himself out. 

If he slept, it was only to dream of those days 
which he and Barbara had passed down at the cot¬ 
tage, to hear the sound of the wind in the trees, 
and the rain spattering down on the leaves, to see 
again Barbara’s frightened eyes across the fire¬ 
light; to hear again her voice with its brave at¬ 
tempt at defiance, and it seemed to him that with 
each recurring memory his villainy grew. 

How he had misjudged her! No wonder she 
would not speak to him or take his hand. 

They had met for a few moments beside Linda’s 
grave and she had studiously avoided his eyes, and 
kept as far from him as possible. 



THE MAN WITHOUT A HEART 201 

There was nothing for him to hope for, no place 
for him on this side of the ocean. 

Then one day he made up his mind and, walking 
into a shipping office, booked a passage back to 
Australia. 

Perhaps out there he would be able to pick up 
the threads of his life afresh; perhaps out there he 
would learn once more to throw back his head and 
breathe the fresh air of freedom. 

He wrote to tell Hyde of his decision, but he got 
no reply to his letter, and then the night before he 
was to sail he heard from a mutual acquaintance 
that his brother-in-law had gone abroad. 

“The best thing he can do,” Asher said. “It’s 
what I’m going to do myself next week.” 

The man who told him looked at him commis- 
eratingly. 

“Yes, you’ve both had a rotten time,” he agreed, 
and then after a moment he asked: “What’s be¬ 
come of Barbara Weir? Do you remember her? 
She was down at Hyde’s place the last time I was 
there.” 

He was surprised at the change in Asher’s face, 
at the colour that beat into his brown skin, and 
the way in which his hard lips tightened. 

“I don’t know. I haven’t seen her—lately-” 



202 THE MAN WITHOUT A HEART 


he answered jaggedly, and then presently: “Why 
do you ask?” 

“Oh, I don’t know.” The other man seemed to 
avoid looking at him. “I always thought she and 
Hyde were—well; no offence meant you know, but 

I couldn’t help seeing that that swine Langely-” 

he broke off helplessly, realizing that he had gone 
too far. But Asher made no reply; he sat for a 
moment staring down at the floor; then he got up 
abruptly, and walked away without another word. 

The demon of jealousy had him by the throat 
again, choking him. 

Barbara and Edmund! So others had thought 
of the possibility besides himself. And no doubt, 
now Linda had gone, that was what would some 
day happen. He tramped the streets for hours, un¬ 
conscious of weariness or the cold wind that blew, 
unconscious of everything but his own jealousy. 

She might have loved him if he had not been 
such a fool! That knowledge made his punish¬ 
ment hard to bear. She might have loved him! 

Well, she did not love him now, that was cer¬ 
tain. 

After to-morrow all chance of seeing her again 
would have gone! After to-morrow the field 
would be clear for Edmund, or any other man. 



THE MAN WITHOUT A HEART 203 

Then suddenly he made up his mind; he would 
see her once before he left England; he would see 
her again, or die. 

As far as he knew, she was still at the hotel, and 
in desperation he turned his steps in its direction. 

The wind had dropped and rain was falling; it 
reminded him of the dark nights down at the cot¬ 
tage, and the ceaselessly falling rain. 

Those days had been hell to him, when they 
might have been heaven. He walked into the hotel 
and stood for a moment blinded by the glare of 
the many lights; then he turned towards the stairs 
and began to make his way up to Barbara’s rooms. 

He had not much hope that she would be there, 
but he knew that he meant to find her and see her 
once more before he left England. 

And then as he stood outside her closed door, 
afraid to knock, it opened and she came out. 

And they stood looking at one another speech¬ 
lessly, and it seemed to Barbara that in the silence 
she could hear the beating of her heart before 
Asher found his voice. 

“Don’t look so frightened, I’ve only come to say 
good-bye. I’m leaving England to-morrow, I shall 
never come back again.” 

She tried to answer, but her voice seemed to 



204 THE MAN WITHOUT A HEART 

have died away, and she pushed the door wide 
again behind her and they went into the sitting- 
room together. 

Her trunks stood about the room half packed; 
one of them, the one he had unstrapped for her 
that first night down at the cottage, was all ready, 
corded and locked. 

Asher looked at them and back to her white face. 

“You are going away?” 

“Yes—to-morrow.” 

And then the tragic silence fell once more and 
was unbroken till Asher began to plead, his voice 
ragged with emotion and stress of grief. 

“Forgive me before I go: I’d give my life gladly 
if it would undo the past. I’ve been an unspeaka¬ 
ble cad, and yet, for God’s sake, say you forgive 
me.” 

Barbara turned her face away and closed her 
eyes, then she said: 

“I told Linda I could never forgive you, I told 
Linda-” she failed for a moment, then strug¬ 

gled on: “I did not understand why I could not, 
but I know now—it was because I loved you, and 
it hurt—the way you treated me! It hurt so— 
unspeakably.” 

Asher gave a stifled groan. 



THE MAN WITHOUT A HEART 205 


“Barbara—oh, for God’s sake-” 

She looked at him with tears in her eyes. 

“You are going back to Australia to-morrow— 
on the Oravia?” 

“Yes.” 

She put out her hand and closed it about his 
clenched fingers. 

“I am coming with you.” 

He stared at her like a blind man to whom sight 
has suddenly been restored; then he gave a chok¬ 
ing cry, and stumbled towards her. 

“Barbara! Barbara! Barbara!” 

“Ruffo, dear Rufifo-” 

She was sobbing unrestrainedly, the tears 
streaming down her face, as Asher took her in his 
arms, holding her as if he feared even now that 
some one would take her from him. 

“Forgive me—forgive me—I shall never forgive 
myself.” 

“I love you-” 

“Say it again! Let me see your eyes when you 
say it.” 

She flung back her head and looked at him. 

“I love you. I think I’ve always loved you.” 
It seemed as if he could not believe her. He was 
shaking from head to foot. 





206 THE MAN WITHOUT A HEART 

“Is it true?—I’m not dreaming?—Barbara— 
may I kiss you?” 

“Please, please kiss me.” 

And it was long before either of them spoke 
again, till Barbara laid her head against his breast 
with a deep sigh of contentment. 

“Ruffo, I can hear it beating, you’ve got a heart 
after all then!” 

He shook his head and laughed shakily. 

“No, I gave it to you the first time we met.” 

She looked up, flushing adorably. 

“Really? Did you love me then?” 

“I adored you.” 

Her eyes clouded. 

“But you believed I-” 

He laid his hand over her lips. 

“Don’t say it, I can’t bear to hear you say it. 
I’m so ashamed, to the depths of my soul. Will 
you ever really forgive me? I don’t deserve it, I 
deserve nothing from you.” 

She was silent for a moment, then she said with 
quivering lips: 

“Ruffo, you once said that women were—queer 
things! Well—do you know that I only knew I 
loved you, when you were such a brute to me, in 
this very room—that last night.” 


THE MAN WITHOUT A HEART 207 

He turned his face against her shoulder as if he 
could not bear her eyes to read its shame and hu¬ 
mility, and the tears that fell were not only hers. 


THE END 
















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